Belfast Wolves star admits 'it's nice to be home' for Ireland leg of European T20 Premier League
Belfast Wolves bowler Mark Adair admits it’s “nice to be home” after the inaugural European T20 Premier League (ETPL) moved to Ireland this week.
After the first 17 matches of the fresh franchise competition were held at Sportpark Westvliet in the Netherlands, the remainder of the tournament will be staged at Malahide Cricket Club in Dublin.
The Wolves, who have several Irish stars in their ranks, including Adair, Paul Stirling and Matthew Humphreys, played their first game on home soil on Wednesday, losing out to the Dublin Guardians by eight wickets.
However, Belfast bounced back with a five-wicket win over Amsterdam Flames the following day with Adair (3/25) named ‘Player of the Match’ while South Africa’s David Miller (42*) helped the Wolves successfully chase their target of 142 for victory.
Holywood native Adair has experience of playing at Malahide for Ireland and is now enjoying an opportunity to represent the Wolves in familiar surroundings.
"It's nice,” he told ETPL’s social media channels. “I've played a lot of games here at Malahide and it's a good place to play.
"I've got some great memories here, but we've also lost games here, so it's tricky. It's nice to be home, it's only an hour-and-a-half up the road from me, so it has been good.
"It was nice to bounce back from (Dublin Guardians) loss. These back-to-back games are pretty tricky.
"We were lucky having had a hit and bowled on it before, but the way the guys bowled - Freddie (Klaassen) and Saurabh (Netravalkar) were brilliant in particular and Davy closed it out.”
The Wolves will be back in action on Saturday afternoon when they face the Rotterdam Dockers, who are captained by the competition’s top run scorer in Faf du Plessis while bowler Anrich Nortje sits at the summit of the wicket charts.
Belfast sit second in the overall table behind Edinburgh Castle Rockers and remain in firm title contention.
Adair believes it’ll be crucial for players to adapt to new conditions in Dublin.
"The mixed reviews (on the pitch) are probably fair,” added Adair. “There's periods where the pitch feels great, it might be a little bit slow, but there's times where it feels tricky.
"I think it's genuinely about adapting. We were at an advantage (on Thursday) having played on it before.”