Paul Stirling reflects on Ireland’s winless campaign in T20 World Cup
Ireland captain Paul Stirling feels that the team couldn’t get the balance right in their batting after disappointing winless campaign in the T20 World Cup 2024. Notably, Ireland failed to win a single game in the tournament as they lost against India, Canada and Pakistan. Their only points came from a washout fixture against the USA who became the second team to qualify to Super 8s from Group A after India.
Ireland’s campaign came to an end after a three-wicket loss against Pakistan on Sunday, June 16 at Central Broward Regional Park Stadium Turf Ground, Lauderhill, Florida. Following the game, captain Stirling reflected on his team’s campaign and expressed elation at the fact that they managed to give tough fight to Pakistan despite being 30/5 at one stage.
“They put pressure on us and they blew away our top-order away and that was the difference. Proud of our fight we showed today, we were 30-5 and managed to get to that score in the end which wasn’t too far away. Thought we will lose by 8 wickets but we fought and that shows we want to play good cricket,” said Stirling in the post-match presentation.
After being put in to bat, Ireland were reduced to 32/6 after 6.3 overs, however, valiant innings from Gareth Delany (31 off 19) and Joshua Little (22* off 18) helped them reach 106/9 in 20 overs. In reply, Pakistan were made to fight hard in their chase being 62/6 after 11 overs befoe Babar Azam (32* off 34) and Shaheen Afridi (13* off 5) saw them home in the 19th over.
It’s been a difficult couple of weeks: Stirling
Further speaking ahead, the 33-year-old said that the team didn’t get the balance right while batting and needed to go hard at certain times. Stirling also mentioned that he would rather see the team batting aggressively like against Pakistan rather than the one against Canada where they lost the match by 12 runs chasing 138 to win.
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“It’s about getting the balance right, in T20 cricket you need that tempo, we haven’t got that quite right, we needed to go hard at certain times but couldn’t. I would rather see us batting like the way we did today than against Canada. It’s been a difficult couple of weeks, we will regroup in the next couple of months and years to come,” the Ireland skipper added.
