AS a group of us watched Scotland's bowlers being thrashed all around The Grange by Australia's batsmen on Tuesday, the conversation drifted towards matters across the Irish Sea where the hosts from one of the "associate" countries were faring rather better against Test opposition.

"Did you know," observed a Cricket Scotland official who was among us, "that the last time Ed Joyce and Boyd Rankin played against one another in a One Day International, they were playing for the other teams?"

By way of absolute clarification, what he meant was that Joyce had been playing for England on the previous occasion, as opposed to Ireland this week, while Rankin had then been in the Ireland line-up as opposed to playing for England.

It was truly farcical that three years after England's visit to The Grange, when Paul Collingwood, as the 16th man in to bat, was the first English-born player to come to the wicket in a match with Scotland, the nation which invented cricket was switching from its long-standing dependence on South African-born players to instead asking Irishmen to bale them out against their native country.

Rankin, from Ulster, was their leading wicket-taker but "England" were still in disarray when Dubliner Eoin Morgan was joined by Ravi Bopara with the score on 48 for four, still 221 runs adrift of Ireland's impressive score. Both struck centuries to ensure that "England" duly achieved their target with a little to spare.

On that form, we can only speculate as to the scale of the probable Irish victory had these international cricketing refugees been playing for their homeland rather than that of the Old Empire.

This, though, is the great dilemma facing a sport which has the potential to be the most inclusive of all, yet which seems bent on long-term commercial suicide in the way it marginalises its potential to grow. On the one hand, there is great pride to be taken by cricketers from the way it reaches across communities, mixing those of all backgrounds regardless of race, creed, gender or age.

This season alone, I have played alongside an eight-year-old who stood unflinchingly in line to score his first runs for our club's second XI, and two septuagenarian wicket-keepers who are still facing up to medium-pace bowlers and taking stumpings; alongside five women all of whom gained selection entirely on merit rather than because of any sort of political correctness, and contributed to a series of victories in a highly competitive league; and alongside players from Australia, England, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, South Africa and Wales.

Yet in spite of all that, the way cricket slavishly revolves around the old Commonwealth is exceedingly unhealthy if it is ever to break out of its traditional heartlands and become a truly global game.

Morgan and Rankin were booed by their own folk in Malahide on Tuesday, which was interpreted by the Irish media as a reaction to apparent English indifference towards the injustice of a situation in which the sporting rich grow richer at the expense of those working fervently to make the step up to elite level.

That point is made in the context of my long-held views on the strength of the Irish sporting culture, as opposed to that in Scotland, and the reasons for that. Imbued with the confidence that comes from having proven themselves capable of taking responsibility for their own fortunes as a nation, while maximising their capacity to benefit from being part of Europe - as well as drawing upon their own diaspora - their traditional Irish amateur sports of hurling and Gaelic Football continue to thrive.

That remains so even when, as one of two international teams on an island which boasts a combined population smaller than Scotland's, the Republic's football team remains above Scotland in the FIFA world rankings.

On top of that, Irish rugby union teams have won a grand slam, three other Triple Crowns and five Heineken Cups since Scotland's last significant rugby success - winning the old Five Nations title in 1999. Furthermore, since Paul Lawrie's Open Championship victory that same year, four different Irishmen have accrued seven major golf titles compared to none from Scotsmen.

Unlike Scotland's most successful sportsmen of recent years, then, Morgan and Rankin are just the latest Irishmen to have had their skills honed sufficiently in their homeland to establish themselves at the top of their sport.

Yet the tight rein held by cricket's traditional powers means that, in spite of the progress Ireland has made in a sport which would once have been regarded as un-Irish by hardliners, they are held back by an artificial system which denies "associate" countries a merit-based opportunity to achieve Test status.

In some ways, no sport reflects old colonial attitudes more than cricket. Even though they already have more first-class players than any other country, the authorities seem to feel entitled to help themselves to other countries' resources, while giving little or nothing back.

That this all happened on the very day George Osborne was outlining his view that, even if Scotland votes for independence its greatest asset, oil, should remain in British hands, could hardly have been more ironic or, perhaps, instructive.