DUBLIN: Cricket Ireland has indefinitely shelved their home white-ball series against Australia later this year, citing predicted significant financial losses.

Australia was originally scheduled to tour Ireland for three ODIs and one T20I in August before travelling to England for three T20Is and five ODIs.

However, Cricket Ireland chief executive Warren Deutrom, while talking at The Final Word podcast, revealed that the cricketing body was estimated to sustain a six-figure financial loss had the series gone as per the plan.

“The simple fact for us was that because we have so few pitches here in Ireland that can host international cricket, we had to make a fairly difficult decision,” Deutrom stated.

“It required us to have to open up Malahide Cricket Ground, and if we were going to do that, we estimated it was going to be a very, very significant six-figure loss for us, to have to open up Malahide.

“The fact is, broadcast rights wise, Australia would probably be the fourth-largest of all the various [opponents] that we would have… It wouldn’t even have covered the cost of the production, opening up Malahide and bearing in mind it’s an entirely green-field site. Those, unfortunately, are the difficult decisions we have to make.”

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Deutrom went on to emphasise his plans to build a new stadium in Ireland before justifying the decision to allow increased investment in women’s and age-group cricket.

“We are no longer a board that exclusively weighs itself by the amount of men’s senior cricket that we host,” he said.

“We are going to try and obviously play Australia again in the future.

“But we are playing 46 international matches this year. We’re supporting 47 or 48 matches at provincial level with our men’s Inter-Pros, our women’s Super Series; we have an emerging competitions; our Wolves [men’s A team] have been in Nepal; we’re going to be hosting West Indies Under-23s this year. That is an awful lot of representative cricket.”

For the unversed, Ireland men are scheduled to host Pakistan for a three-match T20I series in May.

All three matches will be held at Clontarf in Dublin on 10, 12 and 14 May 2024 and will start at 3 PM local time.

READ: Several England stadiums ‘open to exploring’ hosting Pakistan-India Tests