Ireland captain Paul Stirling has urged his side to adapt to the conditions in the ongoing T20 World Cup quickly and play better cricket to seal their place. However, Ireland faced a massive loss against India in their tournament opener and then went down for a second time to Canada on Friday.
“We’ve got two huge games,” he said after the defeat. “Still massive every time you put on the shirt you want to go and win, but no reason why we can’t go and beat USA and Pakistan. We need to play a hell of a lot better if we’re going to want to do that. But different conditions, we know them slightly better and will certainly be given it as best a crack as we can. I think we just want to play as good a cricket as we possibly can. I’ve sort of hammered for at least the last year that if we don’t play our best cricket, we will not win games of cricket. So, we need to get back to our best for next week.”
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Having won over high-weighted teams in the past, Paul Stirling was asked if there is frustration in the team for not having taken the next leap in world cricket as well.
“I wouldn’t say it’s frustrating, no,” he remarked. “I think knowing from where we’ve come from – it actually doesn’t surprise you. It’s not a huge thing, it might be in different levels of the media, but we certainly know not to take anyone lightly from where we’ve come from and that’s just what happened today. They played better cricket than us for three hours and they won the game, simple as that. That doesn’t really, for me, matter what their tagline is, associate or full member or what, they just played smarter cricket, better cricket all day than us and they won.”
He conlcuded, “I think just coming back from obviously the first game where we thought we should have won that game. I feel like all three departments, we kind of ticked today, so it’s a magnificent win for us. I’m very happy obviously to contribute to the team success because I personally felt my over is what kind of gave it away the last game, so for me to come back and help the team get over the line to me, I feel like I’ve done a good job so I’m quite happy.”
