We didn’t give ourselves a chance, says Ireland Captain

Expresses disappointment after his team lost its opening match against Australia

William Porterfield rued his team’s abject top-order batting display, saying Ireland could have stretched Australia had it put on another 40-45 runs on what he called a “pretty good wicket” at the R Premadasa Stadium on Wednesday.

Ireland managed only 123 for 7 after stumbling to 33 for 4 in the eighth over in its opening Group B tie against Australia, a target Australia hunted down at the start of the 16th over with just three wickets down.   

“We did not put enough runs on the board, that’s pretty obvious,” Ireland’s captain said. “We lost too many early wickets. When you are four down for 30 odd in the Power Plays, you are putting yourselves on the back foot. We have played enough cricket to know that’s not where we are at. We should be better now, we should be giving ourselves a chance.   

“It was a pretty good wicket and a big outfield,” Porterfield said. “We should have put on a better show than that. Even had we come up with another 40-45 runs extra, we would have given ourselves a chance, which we are more than capable of. That’s what we backed ourselves to do at the start of the day, putting ourselves in a very good position to come up with a good show with the ball, but we just didn’t have enough runs. To win the toss and bat first and to bat like that, that was the most disappointing thing for us. We let ourselves down. We had done everything right in the build-up to this game, we had played some pretty good cricket against a couple of good sides. We are disappointed with the way we went out and put on a show today.”   

Porterfield was asked if he thought this defeat did anything to raise the profile of Irish cricket. “That’s not the kind of thing we are thinking about,” he replied. “We just want to go out there and put on a show and try and win games of cricket. Obviously, in the bigger scheme of things, we want to push Ireland. We want to prove ourselves, get on the Future Tours Programme and things like that.

That’s the kind of steps we have taken over the last few years and recent tournaments.

We have done pretty well but that all means nothing when it comes down to the day. We have got to put in those performances day in and day out. We didn’t do that today.   

“120 balls is a lot of time, you have to try and get in. The top six have to score the bulk of the runs to give the middle order a chance to bat with freedom,” Porterfield said. “We didn’t do that today. We are not stupid. We know we should be doing that and we have been doing that in the build-up. We went through the right processes, we just didn’t execute on the day. We have four days now to get that right before the West Indies game. Whatever you do, whether you bat first or you bowl first, you have got to set the tone and we didn’t do that.”