John Mooney believes Irish cricket is paying a heavy price for a failure to properly develop young talent, and said the sport needs to learn from the example of Dublin Gaelic football.
Mooney played 182 times for his country before announcing his retirement a year and a half ago.
He scored 2,605 runs and was a key part of the famous World Cup victory against England in Bangalore six years ago.
The sight of the Bristol capitulation in the historic ODI on Friday was, he believes, an inevitable wake-up call, with Ireland "left wanting massively". The Dubliner doesn't see the situation getting much better either.
It’s impossible to step up from Irish club cricket to international cricket and to be expected to perform.
"Six of our top seven batsmen played in the game in 2011, when we beat England in the World Cup," Mooney told RTE Radio 1's Saturday Sport.
"That whole one to 11 English side is completely different. They’re completely different mentally as well.
"That (2011) team came off an Ashes tour, they were cock-a-hoop so speak and probably the one-day game was out of their mind; it wasn’t their first focus if I’m being perfectly honest and we were able to beat them.
"This English team now is full of guys who are hungry. There’s huge money to be made in cricket. If they do well for England they’ve the chance to go and play in the IPL.
"We’re not developing those types of cricketers. It’s impossible to step up from Irish club cricket to international cricket and to be expected to perform."
Mooney pinpoints crucial failing at grassroots level as a key reason for the dearth of young talent.
"The one thing to look at is Dublin football, the development programme they’ve put in place," he said.
"People talk about the Dubs getting too much money, but I know my club, Man O’War, a small club, have a development officer and have had a development officer for the last 10 years.
"Cricket Ireland have spent huge money on an academy but the kids going into the academy haven’t been coached properly, so we’re coaching them at the academy level like they’re novices when the work should be getting done in the clubs.
"The money should be getting spent in there and then when the kids get to the academy they’re actually good cricketers or really good cricketers, not just average cricketers who, because of a lack of numbers, are in the high performance unit.
"That’s where I’d tend to look: how can they help the clubs develop better cricketers. That’s where they’ve probably let themselves down."
We went out and gave it everything but we weren’t at the races and we haven’t been for quite a while.
Ireland will hope to redeem themselves at Lord's this morning in the second ODI (Live blog on RTÉ.ie Sport and the News Now app).
Mooney expects more fight from the tourists, but fears the gulf in class is simply too large to bridge.
"We spoke about the Eoin Morgan factor for England. He’s making sure his troops are on the ball against Ireland especially, and we were left wanting massively. I don’t see it getting much better.
"We went out and gave it everything but we weren’t at the races and we haven’t been for quite a while.
"Going to England, everybody was worried about this happening because the form of the side is poor and confidence along with that is poor.
"Player for player we were well beaten across the board. If you look at their batting compared to ours, their strike rates, the way they hit the ball, their confidence levels... some of our guys are going out really tentative.
"There’s a massive thing in cricket: a fear of failure, going out and being afraid of getting out rather than going out with a desire to score runs. That fear can be crippling.
"These English bowlers are good. They’ll bowl dot ball after dot ball after dot ball. Our batters didn’t have the skills or the confidence to go and change that in the game on Friday.
"One day isn’t enough to turn that around unfortunately."
