The Irish T20 Captain, Gary Wilson is extremely disappointed with his side's batting collapse in the second T20 International against India in Malahide on Friday, 29th June. Chasing India's mountain-like 213, Ireland got off to a stuttery start losing 3 wickets in the first five overs to Umesh Yadav and Siddharth Kaul before completely collapsing, again, to Indian wrist-spin duo of Yuzvendra Chahal and Kuldeep Yadav. They got bowled out for just 70 and lost the game by a very huge margin of 143 runs.
Having lost the series so one-sidedly to the visitors, Wilson talked about the game afterwards, where he said, “It is very difficult to sum up the whole thing. I thought we were going quite well despite that they started very well with the bat again. But we seemed to drag it back in the middle period and then let them get away a touch in the end, which was disappointing,”
Ireland bowled first again, after winning the toss, in hope of restricting the might of Indian batting line-up, but the idea was always too ambitious. Talking about the choice of putting Virat Kohli's men in to bat first, Wilson said, “At one point they were looking at 185-190, which we would have taken. Pitch was a little on the greener side, so we decided to bowl again, but we didn’t lose the game because of that decision,”
“Again (our) batting was very disappointing and we rolled over for much less than what we would have liked there. I think T20 cricket can do that to you. At 4-5 down, it was quite evident that we weren’t going to win the match. We could have knocked it around and got a bit more respectability but it really isn’t going to teach us much. We have to keep going for our shots so we had to go ahead and do that. Yet, to be bowled out for 70 was disappointing.”
He further said, “When you lose the openers early, it is very tough but in T20 cricket, the openers aren’t always going to score or get us off to fliers. We have to learn to combat it"
“It is not ideal to be 2-3 down in the powerplays but the rest of the batsmen have to work to deal with that situation. We cannot hide behind losing early wickets because the batting altogether wasn’t good enough, But the guys will still learn from this experience. Remember, we were playing against the 15 best Indian players in the IPL. They are obviously very good and in the Indian team for a reason. We have to recognize that our skills weren’t sharp enough but the younger guys in this squad will take a huge amount out of these two games. They can see what international cricket is all about,”
What was completely exposed in these two matches was the gap between the two sides, especially the ability of Irish batsmen to be able to counter wrist spin, as Yuzvendra Chahal and Kuldeep Yadav picked 13 wickets together.
Wilson talked about the issue and said, “All around the world batsmen struggle against wrist spin because you cannot tell which way the ball will turn. It is so effective and everyone is dying to have wrist spinners in their team, especially in T20 cricket. Finger spinners can only turn the ball one way. And it’s not just us who has struggled and a lot of other teams when put in the same situation against these wrist spinners would struggle in the same fashion. For us, it is a difficult thing to put right with just one day between the two matches.”
(Inputs from Indian Express)
