The Ireland Men’s Cricket team has secured its place among the best cricket playing nations of the world at the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup this October.
The qualification was sealed after defeating Oman by 56 runs today at the Al Almerat Stadium.
The forecast was that whoever batted second would have an edge so it was an uphill task when Ireland lost the toss and had to bat.
They set Oman a target of 166 and things were looking dodgy when the opposition got to 68 for 2 after ten overs. After that though Ireland’s bowlers came good and Oman only scored another 41 runs for their eight remaining wickets.
Player of the match Andy McBrine hit 36 off 21 balls and claimed 2-24 in an all-round performance of quality. Josh Little delivered another menacing spell with 2-14 from his four overs, and Simi Singh cleaned up the tail finishing with 3-20 from 3.3 overs.
Captain Andrew Balbirnie led from the front in the field and made a number of tactical bowling changes that paid immediate dividends at crucial times. The most influential switch was to bring Little back for an over at the halfway stage with Oman setting themselves for a launch at the target and two set batters gradually upping the run rate. Little’s extra pace induced an edge from Shoaib Khan from his first ball – and from there Ireland didn’t look back.
“I think our determination got us there today, we knew at the start of the week we needed to win three games, and we’ve got better every match – and that’s what you need to do in tournament cricket,” said Captain Balbirnie after the match.
“Our T20 cricket has been inconsistent, and to win three matches in a row we knew we’d have to be at our best – we managed to do that, and that was probably our best all-round performance.”
“We lost a few early wickets, but Gareth Delany and Harry Tector’s partnership was world-class. What impressed me was that they came out firing from ball one and didn’t just take their time to assess conditions – we’ve encouraged the batting group to back yourself and back your shots from the start, and they did that today.”
The semi final win was enough to guarantee the qualification for the Finals, but Irish ambitions will now switch to winning the Qualifier trophy against UAE on Thursday at 10 AM Irish time.
