THE basic skills of the players that make up a cricket team are so wildly different as to make someone who can master both batting and bowling a highly-prized figure. True all-rounders – worth their place on a team for each discipline rather than bits-and-pieces contributors in both – are rare. Rarer still are those players who make their name in one field and then abandon it for the other.

Ireland can boast one such chameleon cricketer, and his stature has grown such that he is now the secret weapon that Ireland’s Men’s T20 World Cup campaign is built around.

Once upon a time he was the teenaged left-arm spinner that dismissed the great Sachin Tendulkar at the 2011 World Cup, now he’s a middle order destroyer aiming to hit Ireland into the Super 12 stage of the T20 World Cup.

But changing his stripes is nothing new for George Dockrell. At Under 13 he was an opening bat who bowled medium pace. On a Leinster trip to Wales, coach Bríain O’Rourke needed an extra spinner and conducted an audition in the hotel car park. Dockrell was the stand-out candidate and four years later he was playing for Ireland, juggling Leaving Cert studies with the 2010 World Twenty20.

That all seems a world away now, as the Dubliner’s career has risen and dipped in the course of earning 267 caps for his country. He spent five seasons with Somerset, returned home to study at Trinity, switched to DCU and is now working with PWC as a Data Analyst, the only member of the Ireland squad not a full-time player.

But all was not well with his game, and he was unhappy with his bowling. His career-best score of 45 against South Africa at the 2015 World Cup helped him see a solution – another reinvention.

“I really enjoyed the innings I had during that competition and in training too”, he said this week. “I learned to hit the ball a bit more and I brought that back to Somerset. It was my final season with the county and the 2nds coach, Steve Snell, helped me push myself more into a batting mindset. I wasn’t playing a lot of first XI cricket at the time so I wanted something to work on through the summer so that was the start of that.”

The Ireland selectors and coaches were losing interest in his bowling and he missed several series and was struggling for form.

“I wasn’t sure exactly where I was going”, he admits. “I had a couple of tough conversations with [former coach] Graham Ford and some of other coaches and I made the switch to become a batter.

“I spent a couple of winters in Brisbane playing with Valleys and I changed a couple of things technically out there. I watched a lot of cricket and tried a few things – what I’d been doing up to then was helping me be an OK No9 or 10 but wasn’t helping me put up big scores for the Irish team.”

Dockrell was in the squad at the 2021 World Cup, his seventh major tournament but the first in which he didn’t play a game.

“It’s always frustrating when you’re not in the team, and you feel you want to help out but I understand that’s how sport works,” he says. "It gave me a chance to keep working on my batting. And not too long later I was back involved in more of a batting capacity.

“I had a frank conversation with Graham Ford about my role and where I was batting for the Lightning – 8 or 9 – which coincided with my bowling not being where I wanted it to be and my opportunities with Ireland not going to continue.”

Dockrell moved up the order with Leinster Lightning, where he was now captain.

“Fordy pushed pretty hard for me to stay involved as a batter and I owe him a huge amount for what he did for me in pushing me into that space. That meant batting in the top 5 for the Lightning, putting a bit more onus on my batting and that also coincided with me taking an internship with PWC in Dublin as part of my data science degree at DCU, which was great as it allowed me to get away from cricket as a full-time thing.

“I was taking days off to play a domestic game so I knew I wanted to spend that day batting and not watching someone else bat. It put my cricket in perspective and brought it back to being more of hobby thing, training in the evening and playing once or twice a week.”

A revitalised Dockrell relished his new role with the province, showing his new self in an incredible innings against Munster. Coming in with 93 needed and just 40 balls left, he smashed nine sixes in making 68 off 18 balls, sealing the win with nine balls to spare.

He took the form up a level, scoring 243 runs in 11 games for Ireland, including a man-of-the-series display against Afghanistan smashing the ball late in the innings. In five games the Afghans just could not get him out, scoring 141 runs in 92 balls as Ireland won 3-2.

“This summer was fantastic,” he says. “I really enjoyed the amount of high quality international cricket we got to play and you can see how the whole team definitely got better as the whole summer progressed. Playing India, New Zealand, South Africa and Afghanistan in one summer was a great test, getting to face some great bowlers.

“I got to try a few things early on in the summer and failed a few times – especially those New Zealand games I wish I’d been able to finish off the innings a bit stronger – but by the end of the summer against Afghanistan I felt I’d learnt a good bit and I was able to bring those games home.”

He hasn’t given up bowling either. “I’m still working on my bowling, I still enjoy it. When I’m batting well its good to have another string to my bow.”

Ireland have a new spin coach too, former Australian test cap Nathan Hauritz. “He’s a real breath of fresh air and has some new ideas”, says Dockrell. “He was a brilliant spinner himself, not just technically but tactically, and he has some great thoughts. We’re a bit closer as a spinners group because of that. I’ve had a few overs under my belt this summer and I know it’s something I can offer to the team – being able to take the ball away from right-handers even for an over or two can add value to the team. So, I’ll keep working away on that.”