This article first appeared in Thursday's Guardian and is reproduced by kind permission of the author.

Ireland will be playing Test cricket inside 10 years - if Cricket Ireland's chief executive, Warren Deutrom, has his way. It sounds a fanciful thought but consider this: in 2007 Ireland came to the Caribbean to play in a World Cup as amateurs. The team included a postman, an electrician, a van driver and two students. Two years on they are back for the World Twenty20 as professionals, with six full-time cricketers, five more on part-time contracts and a host of players making a living on the county circuit. Tomorrow they start their campaign against West Indies in the tournament's second match.

Test status, reckons Deutrom, is between five and 10 years away. "We got to the stage in 2009 where we had won the World Cup qualifier in South Africa and we were ranked 10th in the world. We had finished eighth in the 50-over World Cup and eighth in the World T20. We felt we had achieved everything an associate team could possibly achieve on the pitch and we were asking ourselves: 'Where do we go from here?' The ICC said: 'The next option is to apply for full membership.'

" Ireland want what they call "enhanced membership". Deutrom knows there is no appetite for another weak Test nation. "We have to be more realistic in our aims but at the same time we need a pathway forward." Enhanced membership would bring "all the benefits of full membership without playing Test cricket".

There is a daunting list of criteria to be met first but over the last two years Deutrom has been ticking them off. Cricket Ireland is concentrating on improving the domestic structure and growing the game in schools, "planting the seed and spreading the word", as the development officer, Brian O'Rourke, puts it. A four-team inter-provincial tournament should be introduced next season and there are plans to set up a European first-class competition involving teams from Scotland and the Netherlands.

There are three traditional cricket enclaves in Ireland: Dublin, Belfast and Derry. But the team's success in 2007 started to spark a broader interest. Irish cricket is improving, from the senior team right down to school playgrounds. "Three years ago our commercial revenue was between $50,000 and $100,000. Now we have 10 times that," Deutrom says, "We used to have scores of people turning up to our summer cricket camps. Now we have hundreds."

In 2008 a four-year sponsorship deal was signed with RSA Insurance. "The amount of money we receive from the ICC has gone up from $250,000 to $1m a year but it still only accounts for 30% of our turnover."

The money is being put to good use. A high-performance centre has been built in Bready, in County Tyrone, and another ground is being developed in Dublin. In 2009 Deutrom appointed Mark Garaway, former assistant coach to the England team, to be director of cricket. "A lot of things have amazed me," Garaway says.

"One of them was the standard of the cricketers. On my second day in the job I went to watch an inter-provincial under-14 game and I was amazed at the quality of cricket. I meant to stay for an hour but ended up there the whole day because the cricket was so good."

As well as introducing the England and Wales Cricket Board's Level One and Two coaching courses across the country Garaway has set up an informal agreement with Hampshire where the county get the first look at young Irish talent in return for lending some of their coaching expertise to Cricket Ireland.

"As well as the senior pros like Porterfield, Niall O'Brien, Boyd Rankin and Gary Wilson, there's a whole heap of guys starting to get attention from counties," Garaway says. "There's Paul Stirling and Andy Balbirnie at Middlesex, Shane Getkate at Warwickshire, Craig Young down at Sussex and George Dockrell has made a name for himself."

Sussex's Ed Joyce, who has played one-day internationals for England but intends to go back and play for Ireland before he retires, says: "Ireland has always had good players. The difference now is that they have somewhere to go. Back in the day you would get 17-year-olds with equivalent talent to what you would find at a good English county but after that there was nowhere to go. You could play for Ireland but they were playing Mickey Mouse fixtures. Now for the first time playing for Ireland is something a kid can really aspire towards."

Not all of the criteria are so tangible. The ICC stipulates that to become a full member a country must have an established "cricket culture". Deutrom does not see this as an obstacle. In the mid-19th century cricket was the most popular sport in the country. Imported by English soldiers in the 1790s, cricket thrived around the garrison towns. It is still strong in those areas today but in the rest of the country cricket faded away as the Irish nationalist movement began to promote indigenous sports through the Gaelic Athletic Association.

Cricket became the game of the adversary. After the infamous massacre by the British Black and Tans at Croke Park in 1920 gunmen shot at British officers while they were fielding in a match against the Gentleman of Ireland at College Park in Dublin in retaliation.

On Tuesday Ireland take on England in the Twenty20. Time was when the Irish shunned the English game. Now they have a chance to beat them at it.