“It is tough and it’s only going to get tougher,” said Ireland captain Andrew Balbirnie after Sri Lanka won the first Test by an innings and 280 runs. That seemed a wildly inaccurate assessment at the time – and indeed so it has proven.

Ireland conceded 591-6 in the first Test and after initially responding with 143 all out, quickly found themselves 40-5 when following on. We’re not sure it’s a real confidence-builder when your captain says that Test cricket is only going to get tougher than that.

Imagine how that feels. The opposition was easily on track for 100 runs per wicket and you’ve averaged 12.2 runs per wicket. “Well at least it can’t get much harder than this,” you think.

“It can get harder,” says your captain in all his infinite wisdom. “Not only that, but it will get harder. In fact it will only get harder. This absolute shellacking you’re enduring right now? This is the easiest Test cricket will ever be.”

Fortunately, Balbirnie was completely wrong. Indeed Ireland may even have learned a thing or two from their first Test experience because the second has not been tougher still. Balbirnie himself made 95 when Ireland batted, before Paul Stirling and Curtis Campher hit hundreds. Campher’s was his first ton in any form of professional cricket, so he’s clearly encountered tougher cricket before now.

That Sri Lanka have so far responded strongly is, if not irrelevant, then of limited importance. Ireland’s Test opportunities are so few that it’s tempting to wonder whether it’s even worth bothering when they’re getting beaten in one-off matches against Bangladesh or being utterly outplayed in every facet of the game, as they were in the first Test.

But it is worth bothering – it absolutely is – because they’re only ever a few moments away from something vivid and memorable. This is partly because scarcity of fixtures and lack of history combine to make almost every achievement feel positively monumental. For many teams, 492 in the first innings of a Test match is a small paragraph at the start of yet another chapter. But for Ireland it’s a story in itself. As mentioned above, these were only the third and fourth Test hundreds Ireland batters have ever made and 492 is their highest score in the format by a country mile. (As everyone knows, one country mile equates to 153 runs.)

Whether Ireland win, lose or draw, their matches currently hold huge potential for vivid and memorable events. Things aren’t always going to get tougher, but they probably are going to get more prosaic.

> Having actually fought for it, Ireland seem to comprehend that Test cricket is worth fighting for

Get King Cricket articles by email

A paean to pace, the pivot-pan and the perils of the pair of them today.

If you’re unaware of the shot known as the pivot-pan, it’s probably because we only just labelled it. As you’ve no doubt guessed, the nomenclature in large part arose because we wanted to slot a couple more Ps into our opening paragraph.

The pivot-pan is when a batter adopts a narrow stance and swings cross-batted sufficiently powerfully that they perform a kind of pirouette in their follow-through.

Ireland’s Paul Stirling played just such a shot to Mark Wood today. The ball was wide of off stump, back of a length, and Stirling deployed a full mow, setting his sights on The Dean Jones Bar, which was just in front of square on the leg-side.

The very great thing about the exact moment captured above is that the ball is almost exactly behind Stirling.

This is the thing about pace: it can be quite hard to slog.

However, the other thing about pace is that you don’t always need to middle it.

Down at third man, Sam Curran made a highly valiant attempt to first take the catch and then, when that ceased to be an option, prevent a six.

It was a forlorn effort though as his foot made contact with the boundary. It’s interesting to think that while this worked out as half a dozen on a toblerone ground, it would probably only have been a single (or maybe two) if they’d been using a rope. It’s harder to advertise on rope though.

Two balls later, Stirling stepped away and tried to carve one over the in-fielders to the cover boundary. Unfortunately, he again edged the ball aerially to third man and this time not quite far enough as Curran took an easy catch.

The six was pretty useful though being as Ireland won by five runs according to the Duckworth-Lewis-Stern method.

Top slogging, Paul Stirling.

Well played, Ireland.

T20 is a bit too complicated for us these days, so we’re instead celebrating one of cricket’s oldest and simplest pleasures via our Slog of the Day feature.