Mark Adair - Ireland - Bowler

Born in Ireland, Mark Richard Adair hails from a sporting background and was also considered a potential Ireland superstar while in his teens. His father was associated with football as a prominent goalkeeper at a decent level, and his brother George Ross Adair, represented Ireland youth level cricket before playing a handful of games for the national Under - 19 side in 2011.

At the age of 17, Mark Adair was offered a trial by the Warwickshire County Cricket Club, a remarkable feat considering he wasn’t from an established cricketing nation. And a few years later, on his County debut in September 2015, Adair removed Marcus Trescothick to claim his maiden wicket in First-Class cricket. In the same game, Adair remained the only not-out batter in both innings and nearly steered his side to victory against Somerset.

Renowned as a seam-bowling all-rounder, Adair had an impressive run with Warwickshire’s 2nd XI before making it to the senior side. He was also called up to the Ireland squad to face Afghanistan in a five-match ODI series in July 2016. Unfortunately, though, Adair couldn't make his debut in that series and wasn't considered for the future tours with Boyd Rankin and Peter Chase posing challenges to his place in the side.

“Mark Adair has impressed me with his skills in the limited opportunities I have seen him”, John Bracewell, the then Ireland head coach acclaimed before selecting him for the Afghanistan series at home. Adair kept working on his skills at Warwickshire and did reasonably well when presented with opportunities. As Warwickshire's pool of fast bowling got better with resources like Olly Stone and Harry Brookes, Adair was released by the club at the end of 2017 season.

While it took three long years for Adair to be recalled to the national setup, he finally made his ODI debut against England in May 2019. While he went wicketless in that game, Adair showed enough promise and was handed both T20I and Test caps within the following two months. That wasn’t it, while it took three years for him to make a comeback to the national side, it took him just a shade over three months after making his international debut to land a central contract from Cricket Ireland. With the 2019 Cricket World Cup being cut down to just 10 teams, Ireland failed to make it past the qualifiers. The silver lining for Adair though was that he was Ireland’s leading wicket-taker with 12 wickets from 8 games. In the years that followed, Adair continued to feature regularly for Ireland across formats. In 2021, he became the 3rd fastest to 50 T20I wickets, doing so in 28 outings.

Written by Raju Peethala and Anurag Hegde