IRE vs AFG 2018: Afghanistan's unassailable lead has left the boys hurting, says Irish skipper Gary Wilson

Afghanistan lead the three-match T20I series 2-0.

Ireland T20I skipper Gary Wilson. (Sky Sports)

Afghanistan winning the second T20I of the three-match series means that they have taken an unassailable lead against Ireland. This Afghan victory has left the Irish boys hurting according to their skipper Gary Wilson. 

Wilson moreover went onto say that his boys  “were not good enough” in their 81-run loss to Afghanistan in the second T20I in Bready on Wednesday. 

“I don’t think when you lose by 81 runs you can point to the toss,” said Wilson. Perhaps if you have a 20-run loss or a 10-run loss, you could have said batting second was the harder dig. We would’ve batted had we won the toss, as early on was the best time to bat."

“The boys will be hurting in there and know that that’s not good enough. When we all come to practice tomorrow, I’ll expect everyone to be back up and giving 100%.”. 

“At half-time I was saying it was probably about par score. We could have restricted them to 130-140 if we bowled a little better,” he said.

“Our plans were to get Zazai early, but that hasn’t happened the last two games. I think we contained him pretty well in the first six but obviously we didn’t get him out.”

Meanwhile, Irsih pace spearhead Boyd Rankin who took 2 for 14 in the game said a win before in the final game before the ODIs will boost their confidence. 

“It will be good to come back and get a win in that final T20 on Friday going into the one-day internationals next week – it’ll give us a bit of confidence,” said Rankin.

“It was close on Monday (16 runs), but it was their day today – that seems to be the way T20s go, but hopefully we can come back and put it right on Friday.

“We didn’t finish well. Maybe [if we had done that], we could have got 180-190. But that is part of the game. You can try, but it’s part of the game. Our taconcluded rget was to get at least 140-plus. Our bowling is very good, so we were confident with our score"  concluded Rankin. 

(With ICC inputs)

 
 

By Anshuman Roy - 24 Aug, 2018

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