Incredible! Ireland made it to the Super 12s
Incredible! Ireland, who failed to get past the first round in their last five T20 World Cup outings, have not only made it to the Super 12s but have also knocked the two-time champions out of the competition. Fantastic all-round performance. The bowlers bowled stuck to their plans and the fielders backed it up in the field to restrict West Indies to a less than 150 score on a pretty good batting track. Delany starred with a three-fer and all the other bowlers, except Campher, were economical as well. Yes, the target of 147 was clearly below-par and Ireland made a mockery of it.
Gareth Delany: player of the Match : We executed our strategy perfectly. Our spin bowling coach Nathan Hauritz came up with a plan to help get us over the line. We chose to utilize a simple approach, which ended up being a success. Truth be told, we’re genuinely thrilled to have achieved this position. Campher’s recent knock-out of Scotland combined with Dockrell’s contribution made it possible.
Previously two-time openers, neither of whom fired in the first two games, got their team off to a fast start. Stirling and Balbirnie hit the boundary for fun and lowered the price tag on their RPOs with ease. However, Ireland’s Akeal Hosein broke up the partnership in the eighth inning by removing their captain. Despite this, Ireland barely seemed to notice. Ireland captured the chase with clinical ease. Stirling and Tucker kept the momentum going when they both joined him. The West Indies looked clueless as it was just a generic chase.
Nicholas Pooran: It’s tough, we haven’t batted well in this tournament at all. On a really good batting surface, making 145, it’s a really difficult task for the bowlers. It was going to be a challenge. Congratulations to Ireland, they batted fantastically and bowled well today. There are a lot of positives, Jason is back to bowling well, King is batting wonderfully, Joseph is stepping up with the ball for us. This is a learning experience for us. We have disappointed our fans and ourselves. It’s definitely hurting. I have disappointed my guys with the way I performed.
Andrew Balbirnie: Win means everything. We had a disappointing loss last year at the same stage. We did a lot of thinking and a lot of things changed back home. New coach and there were a couple of things that we wanted to do as a team, the way we wanted to play. Losing the first game and then coming back and beating a two-time champion in a must-win game … just couldn’t be prouder.
Pretty emotional finish to the game, but we are just delighted as a group. A lot of things can happen on your day in T20 cricket. We could be playing our next game here, we’ve played three here and that could be in our favour. We want to pit ourselves against the best. It was a really good wicket. Stirling is one of our best ever batters. The way he played today, it made it easy for me and the way I played made it easy for him. The way Lorcan came in and played freely was great. It was a real all-round performance. The bowlers were superb, the wicket was good. A proud day to be Irish.