Ireland got their ICC T20 World Cup qualifying campaign back on track with a convincing win over Jersey in their penultimate group stage match in Abu Dhabi.
Smarting after the loss to Canada on Wednesday, head coach Graham Ford was looking for an improved bowling effort in today’s match after making one change to the line-up with Craig Young coming in for Stuart Thompson.
After winning the toss and choosing to bowl first it took just four balls to show the Irish side were back in business as Mark Adair, who has bowled impressively throughout the tournament, struck in the first over removing Jersey opener Harrison Carlyon without scoring.
The express pace of David Delany accounted for the next wicket, ripping through Nick Greenwood’s defence and upsetting the stumps, and this signalled a collapse from the Jersey batters. In all they lost 9 for 69 in 15 overs to be all out off the last ball for 105.
After having an off day with the ball on Wednesday, the Ireland bowlers were back on song, led by player of the match Adair (3-10 from 4 overs), two wickets to Delany, and one apiece for Boyd Rankin, Gareth Delany, Craig Young and George Dockrell. Rankin’s wicket, a sensational reflex caught and bowled, was his 50th wicket in T20I cricket in this his 45th appearance.
The main concern for Ireland though is the injury to paceman Delany who left the field limping after not being able to complete his third over.
Chasing 106 for victory, the Ireland batters were in no mood to let Jersey in with a sniff.
Paul Stirling struck 58 not out from 37 balls to lead the response (including 5 fours and 2 sixes), while Andy Balbirnie was getting back to his best form making 33 from 27 balls.
While Kevin O’Brien only made 11, he did pass 2,000 T20 runs for Ireland in the process with only Stirling and William Porterfield ahead of him on the all-time Irish records.
To ensure domination of the match and give Ireland a big boost in the Net Run Rate column, Stirling finished the run chase off by lifting Jersey’s Dominic Blampied for consecutive sixes.
Batsmen to have scored more than 650 T20I runs in a calendar year:
— T20 World Cup (@T20WorldCup) October 25, 2019
🏏 Shikhar Dhawan in 2018
🏏 Kevin O'Brien in 2019
🏏 Paul Stirling in 2019@Irelandcricket batsmen doing the business this year 👏 👏 #T20WorldCup pic.twitter.com/whlDJvQV5R
The win leaves Ireland in third place on net run rate in the Group B table with one game to play.
The slim hopes of automatic qualification for the World Cup will now take a convincing win against Nigeria and results going favourably elsewhere.
If not topping the group and achieving automatic qualification, Ireland will enter the sudden death knock-out phase early next week.
"It was obviously very important to bounce back strong, if we didn’t we may have been out of the competition," said wicketkeeping batsman Gary Wilson.
"So it was pleasing to get a win today and hopefully we can take the momentum into tomorrow and move on from there.
"Crucial tomorrow will be run rate, which will be important, but first we have to win the game. Nigeria are a bit of an unknown quantity for us, so we’ll have a look at the footage from the previous games and look to tackle them the best way possible. We’ve played some good cricket today, so hopefully we can continue that into tomorrow."
SUMMARY SCORECARD
Ireland v Jersey, T20 World Cup Qualifier, Abu Dhabi, 25 October 2019
Jersey 105 (20 overs; B Stevens 25; M Adair 3-10, D Delany 2-12)
Ireland 110-2 (14 overs; P Stirling 58*, A Balbirnie 33)
Ireland won by 8 wickets
