Tucker tucks into Irish history books

When Lorcan Tucker walked in on Thursday, Ireland were 93-5, with an innings defeat hanging over their heads.

When he went back to the pavilion, Ireland had a 79-run lead, making a comeback from an oblivious situation.

In between, the wicketkeeper-batter made 108, becoming the only second Irishman to pick up a century, and he did so in his debut.

He is the seventh batter to pick up a century at number seven on his Test debut, and what made his innings even more significant was that it was the first Ireland ton that came away from home. And also, this was his first triple-figure score in first-class cricket, with his previous best being 80.

The joy was evident on his face when he brought out a beautiful cover drive to walk into the Irish history books but the celebration, despite the momentous occasion, was surprisingly dull, with the Irish batter just lifting his bat, donning a wide smile on his face.

“I don’t like to be too high or too low. I try to be consistent the whole time with cricket and life. It was a great day. So trying to enjoy for what it is,” Tucker said about his celebrations.

While the celebrations were very close to being muted, his innings was one of grit, determination, and brilliance.

Tucker looked set from the moment he played his first ball, and developed his innings accordingly, building partnerships to ensure they did not face a collapse, and by the time he was out chasing a wide delivery, he had made sure that Ireland were well back in the game.

Besides that grit and calculation, the Irishman also displayed some beautiful shots, but the best was probably in the first session when he crashed Ebadot Hossain for two fours in a row, with the second being better than the beautiful first.

He reached his century off 149 balls and before getting out, hit 14 fours and a six.

Although Tucker himself did not believe that something that special would happen, he did it under massive pressure.

“It is obviously pretty special. It wasn’t something that I thought would happen today. We were under a lot of pressure. We tried to take it ball-by-ball and bat for as long as we could. It was very special to get a personal reward,” he said.

While the pressure was a definite problem, a bigger one was the heat, which at some points during the day, felt impossible to deal with.

“You are trying to get into a space where you think you can bat for long periods. Just trying to get into the mindset of things happening slowly. I know the temperature is hot but to get into that mindset, you have to forget about the weather,” Tucker explained his gameplan in such scorching sunlight.

One thing the Irish batter did brilliantly was picking the bowler to attack as he rather opted to attack the Bangladesh pacers than the spinners.

“Bangladeshi spinners are very accurate. It felt like it was going to be hard to score more than two or three runs an over against them. I thought there was an opportunity to score against the seamers with the field up,” he explained why.