Ireland beat the T20 World Champions, India, convincingly at home in a two-match T20I series. Meanwhile, Harry Tector, thanks to those results, has become only the sixth Ireland player to reach 100 T20Is as well.
“Sometimes those things can be hard to measure,” Tector said, “because when I was growing up, Ireland beat Pakistan in 2007, beat England in 2011. Like they were so, so big for the sport, but I think as an achievement for a cricket team to go out there and beat the two-time back-to-back world champions, it’s like they’re such a good team. I couldn’t speak to the games I haven’t been involved in because they were such amazing wins at a time when Irish cricket needed to do it, but certainly since I’ve been involved I’m not sure I’ve been involved in a bigger accomplishment.”
However, Ireland played without their five first-choice seam bowlers and Paul Stirling. Two players stood up for them in particular: the Indian-born Jai Moondra and the South African-born Matt Hollard. Both of them had to struggle to be there, but both took their struggles in their stride and did their best in their first two international matches. Moondra started both matches with the wicket of Sanju Samson on the very first ball, and Hollard backed those starts up with brilliant spells.
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“I sat there in the change room [thinking] the three guys [fast bowlers], Liam McCarthy had only played one game before,” Tector further said. “So we went into the series with one match between three bowlers. Just the clarity they bowled with. We went in with a simple plan once we saw the first innings on Friday, and then batting on the surface today it felt similar so the plan didn’t change that much, but you still have to execute against some really good batters. Jai, Matt, Liam today was excellent and probably went under the radar, but I reckon he went it under six an over. I think they’ve certainly stuck their hand up. That’s what we want to see: guys come in, put in performances and make it difficult for the selectors, and they’ve done that in buckets today.”
While it might still be up for argument if this indeed is Ireland’s biggest achievement in international cricket, you add the women’s win against West Indies at the T20 World Cup on Saturday and this becomes unequivocally their greatest week in cricket.
“What the women achieved yesterday was huge and I think it’s a big monkey off their back,” Tector again said. “I think it was, it was a long time coming. They’ve been playing really well for a really long time and I obviously date Gaby [Lewis, the captain], so like I’m quite intimate in the whole, experience of it, I guess, but, I think she would probably think that they were disappointed to not win more than once because I think they went in with a lot of confidence, so I was delighted to see them get over the line.”
“I think Orla [Prendergast] is world class. She’s one of the best allrounders in the world. The way she’s played at this World Cup has certainly shown that. The weekend on a whole is just huge. You know, you ride that wave of momentum of reporting, and hopefully get onto the front or back pages of major newspapers here would be a big achievement because sometimes you win games and it doesn’t even get reported on. This weekend, the momentum we have is brilliant, and hopefully it does a lot for us going forward in terms of getting more games in our summer and playing in front of home crowds. That’s what you want to do as an Irish cricketer. I got my 100th cap today, but I reckon more than half of them are away from home, certainly a good bit more than half actually, so playing at home is brilliant, and I’d love to do more,” Harry Tector concluded.
