Ireland’s T20 cricket team faced a disappointing conclusion to their series against the West Indies, led by captain Paul Stirling. Ireland succumbed to a 62-run defeat in that third and final match at Bready, admitting defeat in the series 1-0. The series ended up being extremely difficult, as the first two games were called off because of a torrential downpour.
Things took a different turn on the third match, as the West Indies set a dominating target of 256 runs. Ireland, meanwhile, did well to reach 194-7 in their innings. Stirling himself was a victim of the early dismissal curse, going for just 13 runs in the 2nd over. Although disappointed with the loss, he was quick to point out the positives to learn from coming out of the match.
“There are some positives to take from it,” – Ireland captain Paul Stirling.
Stirling stressed that there were always phases of play where the team was on par with the West Indies. He explained the team’s approach:
“The message was to go out and give it your all and we just fell short, but there were periods of the game where we feel we were up to the standard and the West Indies score, but it kept going up towards the end.” – Paul Stirling.
While Ireland struggled to chase down the massive total, Stirling praised a specific bowling spell from his team, calling it “one of the best spells of T20 international bowling I’ve witnessed from us.” This recognition of standout play despite an overall lost series shows Stirling’s willingness to focus on players’ development and improvement.
Looking forward, Ireland is not scheduled to compete again until Sept. Against England, they are set to play a three-day T20 series with the third T20 potentially being Epic Ireland’s debut. Stirling said that he was optimistic that his team could take advantage of the intervening three-month period to focus on areas that needed further improvement.
“We’ve got a lot to work on, we have domestic cricket coming up in the next weeks and the gap after that will be the tricky part, we have to come into September in better preparation than we are at already.” – Paul Stirling.
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