Paul Stirling has played T20 franchise cricket everywhere from Guyana to South Africa and Bangladesh but today he will get the chance to represent his home city for the first time when Belfast Wolves take on the Dublin Guardians in the ETPL.

The second game in the latest white-ball tournament will see the big-hitting veteran face up to his long time Ireland team-mates George Dockrell, Harry Tector and Josh Little at the Voorburg ground in the Netherlands.

“There’ll be a fair bit of a rivalry between Belfast and Dublin,” Stirling said. “There are brilliant players on both sides, so there’s definitely an air of excitement around the game.

While the Guardians have been preparing for their campaign at home, netting and training at the Clontarf and North County clubs, the Belfast outfit got on site early.

“We’ve been very fortunate with the Wolves to have had a camp in Holland over the last five days,” Stirling said. “We feel like we’ve got a strong side, led by [Australian star] Glenn Maxwell, and hopefully we can get off to a good start.

“Having said that, it’s also just nice to be able to say finally that we’ve got on a flight to play in a franchise tournament in Europe. It’s something that has been talked about for the last few years and now it’s actually here, everyone is buzzing.

“There are some seriously good players involved, both overseas and local, so it should be a really strong tournament.”

The opening game of a venture that first failed to get off the ground in 2019, and then again every year since, was won by the Rotterdam Dockers who chased down Amsterdam Flames 157-8 with five wickets and 11 balls to spare.