Andrew Balbirnie claims Ireland have what it takes to put an end to their struggles against spin bowling and deliver a much-needed strong display when they face England at Lord's today.
After the convincing nature of their defeat in the first of two one-day internationals in Bristol on Friday, Ireland head to the home of cricket desperate to make a good impression (11am, Live blog on RTÉ.ie Sport and the News Now app).
But key to that will be putting an end to their dismal recent record against spin bowling, which continued when England's Adil Rashid took career-best figures of five for 27 in Bristol.
That performance followed big returns for Afghan spinner Rashid Khan when the sides met in a five-match series in India earlier this year, when Khan took a total of 16 Irish wickets.
"We're sort of sick of the name Rashid at this stage," Balbirnie joked.
"[Adil]'s obviously a very good bowler but in our opinions, Rashid Khan is a much better bowler. We managed to get on top of him at times in Afghanistan and we found it a lot easier when we brought the game to them.
"He's not got any secrets, he's obviously a very accurate bowler and bowls a lot of googlies, but we've got to have a better plan for him and we've good enough cricketers to be able to do that."
With the prospects of finally gaining Test status and more ODIs in the calendar than ever before, Ireland, who brought home a 3-2 series defeat by Afghanistan, have hit a bad run of form at the worst possible time.
But Balbirnie insists that the comparative lack of resources in the Irish game should not be used to explain poor results and warns that the pressure is on to deliver results in order to maintain the sport's forward momentum here.
We've got to put on a performance. We don't want to do what we did before and disappoint a lot of people.
"It's obviously tricky with the facilities we have in place compared to the ECB and all the money they have," he told RTÉ Sport.
"But we have probably the 14 best cricketers in the country here and we have enough experience and guys who have played in big games.
"We want to be playing the best teams in the world but at the same time we have to be putting in better performances and competing with these guys or else we'll slowly slide down the pecking order and won't get these games."
Facing a packed house at Lord's might be a daunting challenge, but the likes of Balbirnie, Ed Joyce and Tim Murtagh have all called the London venue home during their time at Middlesex and will seek to aid their younger team-mates as much as possible.
"Whatever we can do to help the lads who are new here, we will," he added. "It's a fantastic place to play cricket, 25,000 people and a lot of Irish people are going to be here.
"We've got to put on a performance. We don't want to do what we did before and disappoint a lot of people."
