Former Ulster rugby player emerges as ‘star man’ of Irish cricket team

The Holywood native hit a brilliant maiden T20 century on Sunday.

Ross Adair grew up in Holywood, County Down and began playing schools rugby for Sullivan Upper School.

After playing for the Ulster Ravens in the British and Irish Cup, Adair made one senior appearance for Ulster in the Pro12, scoring a try against Dragons in 2015.

He moved to Jersey Reds in 2015, where he remained for two years before a degenerative hip condition ended his professional career.

Two operations later, the centre returned to rugby at an amateur level with Ballynahinch RFC, with whom he won the Ulster Senior League in 2019 and was named Club Player of the Year in the Ulster Rugby awards.

The promising athlete switched his attention to cricket in 2020, and made his T20 debut for the Northern Knights in August of that year.

Within two years, Adair earned his maiden call-up to the Ireland cricket team and two years on from that, was named in Ireland’s squad for the 2024 ICC Men's T20 World Cup tournament.

The Northern Irishman cemented his arrival on the world stage on Sunday with a magnificent 57-ball century as Ireland took down South Africa.

A T20 century requires a batter to start quickly, accelerate, and take every opportunity to hit the ball out of the ground.

It's no mean feat considering that in 171 matches, only three men have made T20 centuries for Ireland.

The first two, Paul Stirling and Kevin O’Brien, have close to 400 caps each, while Ross Adair has played just 10 internationals.

Former Ireland wicket-keeper Niall O’Brien was very expressed by Adair's performance.

"His innings has certainly made people stand up and take note," he said. "Franchises want people who can take teams down in the powerplay, and Ireland have two such players now in Paul and Ross.

"The more exposure he can get the more traction he will get globally, so it’s a case of building on this. But Ireland have no T20 internationals for about four months, which is a shame."

Things are only going to get better for Adair, as he's off to spend the winter with the University of Adelaide, hoping to sharpen his game on the hard Australian pitches.