By Kuldip Lal
Ireland captain William Porterfield vowed to bounce back in the World Cup after gifting a 27-run victory to Bangladesh in their first match on Friday.
Published: Feb 26, 2011, 01:48 PM (IST)
Edited: Feb 26, 2011, 01:48 PM (IST)
Ireland captain William Porterfield (pictured) vowed to bounce back in the World Cup after gifting a 27-run victory to Bangladesh in their first match on Friday. The leading non-Test nation messed up their chase of Bangladesh’s modest 205 all out and were dismissed for 178 in 45 overs in the day-night game at the Sher-e-Bangla stadium
By Kuldip Lal
Dhaka: Feb 26, 2011
Ireland captain William Porterfield vowed to bounce back in the World Cup after gifting a 27-run victory to Bangladesh in their first match on Friday. The leading non-Test nation messed up their chase of Bangladesh’s modest 205 all out and were dismissed for 178 in 45 overs in the day-night game at the Sher-e-Bangla stadium.
“It’s not hard to work out where we lost this game, we let ourselves down with the bat. After 50 overs it was pretty good and we did really well to claw back after the first five or six overs with the ball. You can’t afford that many soft dismissals throughout a tournament, let alone an innings, but we’ve just got have to bounce back from this, we can’t get too down,” said Porterfield, 26, who plays for Gloucestershire in English county cricket.
“We’ve got a lot of cricket still to play in this tournament. We’ve showed glimpses of what we can do and we’ve batted well in the two warm-up games coming into this tournament. We have to leave the batting here and move on to Bangalore,” the captain said ahead of the next Group B match against England on March 2.
Porterfield refused to blame the defeat on the partisan support for Bangladesh from 25,000 fans in the packed stands.
“We were never short of runs, we just kept losing wickets. We have never played in front of such a big crowd, but I don’t think that had an effect on our performance. I actually enjoyed the atmosphere,” he said.
“These Bangladeshi fans are fanatical. They are great supporters of their team. But the crowd did not have an effect on us,” he added.
After Bangladesh won the toss and elected to bat, the Irish dented the home team’s batting with Andre Botha picking up three wickets and Trent Johnston and and teenage spinner George Dockrell two each.
The bowlers fought back after a blistering attack from Tamim Iqbal, who top-scored with 44, helped Bangladesh race to 49-0 in five overs.
But the batting unravelled in the face of Bangladeshi spin and pace, half the side falling for 110 before Kevin O’Brien delayed the end with a fluent 37.
Porterfield rubbished suggestions his team’s weakness against spin will cost them dearly in future. “I don’t think spin did us in,” he said. “We knew they would come with at least four spinners. We just had too many soft dismissals.
“The pitch was slow and the ball kept low, but it was not misbehaving. If we play the way we have been playing over the last couple of weeks, we don’t think we’ll have major issues to move forward,” he added.
© AFP
