Good fight from Ireland, but a loss is a loss. They should win these sort of close matches. In the end, no one will remember the margin of victory. In the books, it will be recorded as 2-0 series win for India. I appreciate the way some of the Irish players, especially Paul Stirling, Andy Balbirnie, Harry Tector, George Dockrell and Mark Adair gave the scare to India. But it was a match where they had a good chance of winning. All the hard work was wasted, when Harry Tector got out. He should have stayed till the end, to guide them to a victory.
@Sithara007 maybe history will forget how they played, but I hope that Indian selectors remember this match because I felt that team India bowler’s were not up to the mark, and had their batman not scored so many runs it would have ended in a humiliating defeat for them.
Such an entertaining innings by Paul Stirling, but he got out when Ireland needed him to stay. Balbirnie is struggling out there and if the remaining Irish batsmen can't score runs quickly, then the match will rapidly drift out of their control. But still, during the initial powerplay, Ireland scored a massive 73 runs in 6 overs. Now they lost another wicket, as Gareth Delany got out trying for a single that was never there. Ireland need to convert their good starts to good finishes. Else they will remain at the second tier test system for infinite amount of time.
Edit: Balbirnie hits 50, after struggling a lot.
225 runs chase will never going to be easy for Ireland. They did play a few very good overs but to keep the pace for full 20 overs is difficult for a small team like Ireland. Now they need almost 12 runs per over for the next 9-10 overs which is quite an impossible task for the Ireland batsmen. Both the openers Paul Stirling and Andy Balbirnie are out and two new batsmen at the crease now make the task more difficult against the Indian bowlers.
Its a big score but they are fighting really hard tho.
They need 34 runs in 14 balls and it's possible in T-20. I felt that they are only relying on sixes, boundaries but not successfully rotating the strike it happened with the Irish openers specially Balbirnie and rest of the batters also doing the same. This is okay in small ground like this one but not successful strategy overall.
29 off 11 now so it's going down the wire.
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Uff so close, hard luck for Irish team and big relief for youngster Malik.
I will give full marks to the Ireland team for showing some amazing performance and lost only by 4 runs. Hard Luck. They needed 17 off the last over and at the end of the day a boundary was the difference between winning and losing.
On the other hand, it was a sign of relief in the Indian camp as they managed to write in the history 2-0 to Ireland.
Lastly if anyone had wagered live on this match then they would have got some really good odds on India, as I sincerely believed that Ireland was about to defeat India, but overall I’ll yet say that Indian bowler’s disappointed and the selectors should be careful to select them against the big teams.
