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Ireland v England T20I series: Heinrich Malan expects to face ‘quality’ England

Wicketkeeper Ben Calitz has been called up to the senior Ireland squad for the first time for the three matches with England.

“From our point of view, we look at people who are playing in domestic competition and are eligible to play for Ireland, have they got the attributes and performances, can they impact the game in how we want to go about our game from a T20 perspective,” explained Ireland coach Malan.

“It’s a nice opportunity for Ben to showcase some of the attributes that we’ve seen from him in the domestic game as a left-hander.

“With us potentially facing a lot of spin, he has got a nice power game and hopefully he can contribute from a strike rate perspective and be in a position to build on the platform that the top-order batsmen put in place for us.”

Ireland are without bowling trio Mark Adair, Fionn Hand and Josh Little, but Malan believes this offers up a chance for others in the squad to impress.

“It’s never ideal when you’re missing some of your quality players, but it certainly opens up an opportunity to build a bit of squad depth and ensure that the players who come in get a feel for the experience of international cricket.

“If things don’t work out hopefully they pick up a couple of areas that they can go back and work on and if things do work out, we’ve got some nice competitiveness within our squad.

“Healthy competition for places is one of the key areas we have been working on. We see it as a benefit, not necessarily as a challenge.”

Ireland opener Ross Adair is set to face England for the first time and the hosts will hope he can deliver again after contributing a quickfire century against South Africa in T20 format and 48 against the West Indies earlier this summer.

“He plays that aggressive role for us at the top and tries to get us off to some really fast starts. He’s definitely got that licence from us to go out there and express himself,” Malan added.

“He’s managed to do that in those two innings against quality sides and hopefully that’s the foundation he can build on as his career goes on.”

Malan says the Irish squad is looking forward to playing at the County Dublin venue.

“We haven’t played at Malahide for a little period but when we played India there, when we played New Zealand there in the last couple of years, it’s always buzzing, there’s always a nice atmosphere,” he said.

“Hopefully the weather plays ball and we can have three good games of cricket.”

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