The Irish opener, Paul Stirling has done it again to beat England after his brilliant century which helped his team to register a seven-wicket win over the world champions during the third ODI at Southampton on Tuesday. Both Stirling, with 142, and Ireland captain Andrew Balbirnie (113), went on to score tons during Ireland’s ultimately successful chase of 329. It was Ireland’s highest successful chase in ODIs, after they chased down the target of 328 in a dramatic 2011 World Cup win over England in Bangalore.
When both Stirling and Balbirnie getting dismissed ina quick succession, however, it looked like Ireland might falter but Kevin O’Brien (who scored a hundred in 2011) helped the team to surpass the century.
After receiving the player of the match award, Stirling said, “We’ve chased over 300 a number of times, so we knew we could do it.” On the other hand, Balbirnie added: “We absolutely thought we could chase it, we just knew we had to bat well up top. We are delighted with how it finished. We obviously didn’t perform with the bat in the first two ODIs.”
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Ireland’s win has also become the highest successful chase by a visiting team in England as the earlier record was oof India when they chased down a daunting target of 326 in the Natwest final. This was also reland’s first ODI win over England in England and their first against a major nation since the 2015 World Cup.
Earlier England captain Eoin Morgan played a brilliant knock of 106 against his native country after being dropped by opposing skipper Balbirnie on 67. But with England eyeing a humungous score, they lost three wickets for 13 runs in declining from 190-3 to 203-6 before being dismissed for 328.
Talking about the loss, Morgan aid, “Full credit to Ireland, they’ve outplayed us today. I thought we had an average day. We stuttered throughout.”
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Come to the last 10 overs, Ireland needed 76 to win with nine wickets standing. But both Tector and O’Brien hit valuable boundaries as Ireland required just eight runs off six balls, with paceman Saqib Mahmood bowling the last over. With Ireland needing three runs from four balls, and Mahmood promptly bowled a high full toss and it was called a no-ball and from which Ireland took a further run off the bat. O’Brien then hit the winning run when he thrashed Mahmood through backward square leg.
