THE scenes of celebration were quite wild in Barbados on Sunday night as Ireland put Bangladesh to the sword in the cricket World Cup, and why not!

Over a month after they shocked the world order with an amazing victory over Pakistan, Trent Johnston and his team were finally back in the winner’s enclosure.

Their qualification for the Super-Eight stage of the tournament was a notable feat in itself. No one really gave Ireland any chance of joining the elite teams at the business end of this tournament when they set off for the Caribbean last month.

Any of the journalists I know covering the event reckoned they’d be home within a fortnight, and packed as such.

To their great surprise this Irish team have gone further than even the players imagined, and good luck to them. They have approached their sport with a buoyant enthusiasm than has been a pleasure to observe from afar.

Every time I see the likes of Niall O’Brien or his brother Kevin or Trent Johnston on the television screen, they look like men who know how to enjoy life and sport.

They also have a great rapport with the Blarney Army who has followed them across the Caribbean these past weeks, and that is almost as important as the sport itself.

It reminds me of the way Irish football used to be, the one for all and all for one attitude that stood Jack Charlton’s team and the Green Army so well at Euro ’88 and Italia ’90 and into USA ’94.

It has changed on the soccer front, of course it has. Irish football fans are now a demanding lot, and sometimes their demands are greater than the combined efforts of the team which has led to some nasty and unnecessary media coverage in recent years.

Irish cricket has yet to adapt that cynicism, and I hope it never does. The players and the fans who have painted Barbados, Guyana and Jamaica green deserve their 15 minutes of fame without the negativity associated with professional sport.

They also deserve to grow their sport. As a result of their Super-Eight win over Bangladesh late on Sunday night Ireland now qualify to play first class one day internationals.

That will give the game here a game a friend of mine refers to as Protestant hurling yet another shot in the arm. Who knows, many years from now we might even win cricket’s World Cup with players inspired by the heroes of 2007.

Then the fun and games will really begin!