, although Porterfield left Gloucestershire in the off season,
Bloody hell he's left as well?! **** me, have Gloucester got anyone? You seem to have sold half your team in your off season
You should be okay Peadar hopefully you can scare quite a few teams.
Ireland are a good workmanlike team that are getting better all the time. I really like Niall O'Brien, cracking keeper batsman and his brother is pretty decent as well, good striker of a bowl and a handy bowler. You add Ed Joyce and William Porterfield to that mix and you've got a pretty decent outfit.
Ireland will feel with the likes of Bangladesh, West Indies, ourselves and the great World Cup bottlers that are South Africa they can spring 1 or 2 surprises. Netherlands will think that as well, but I think Ireland have a better all round team.
Anyways my predictions for the World Cup. There's generally a player or 2 that lights up the World Cup, Akram in 92, Jayasuriya in 96 and Klusener in 99 and to an extent Dwayne "The Fridge" Leverock in 2007. My tip for this World Cup is Suresh Raina, a really exciting young talent from the middle order of India's delicious looking batting lineup.
Raina is one to watch for sure but Hashim Amla will have a good tournament I feel, he's been in unbelievable form in Tests and ODI's the past 12 months or so and I expect that to continue.
For England I think Stuart Broad will be our star man, he is developing very nicely and seems to have got over his injury with 2 fine bowling performances against Canada and Pakistan in our warm up games.
My prediction for the winners has to be India, they just look a really wonderful team this time round. Sri Lanka should do well as well, any team with Jayawardene, Sangakkara, Dilshan, Mathews and Kulasekara should do well. I hope they don't meet in the quarter-final. I would of course love England to get to the final but realistically that won't happen, semis at best for England, but an India v Sri Lanka final would be just lovely.