India and Ireland both will start their campaign today at Nassau County International Stadium, New York. Though the pitch had supported the bowlers after the match we saw between Sri Lanka and South Africa some concerns were raised about the pitch drop-in out field being slow and the grip over the surface is not perfect.
Earlier India played the warm-up match on the same pitch and secured a comprehensive win over Bangladesh. Ireland currently holds the form from recent matches though they faced a series loss against Pakistan at home but a tri-series held in the Netherlands were dominated by them.
Paul Stirling feels India’s challenge is difficult for mighty Ireland
Ireland and India are considered to be an underrated encounter in international cricket, records against Ireland are comfortable, and have complete dominance over Ireland. The last time when both teams played against each other India had the upper hand over Ireland winning the series twice in Ireland once under Hardik Pandya’s captaincy and another under Jasprit Bumrah’s captaincy. But this time you can’t take Ireland lightly they have picked the form and will challenge India. Ireland’s skipper and most senior player Paul Stirling speaks ahead of the clash between Ireland and India, Paul Stirling feels India’s challenge will be difficult. He says:
“India is a really difficult challenge – they’ve got several top, top bowlers, they’ve just come off the back of the IPL and we know what they bring is the highest quality in cricket standards. No matter what happens, if we put in a strong performance we’ll go in with confidence into the next three games of the group,”
Paul Stirling feels the same about other teams
Further Paul Stirling added that other teams in the pool like Pakistan, the USA, and Canada will also be a challenge for us to defeat, and since the USA is also considered one of the strongest teams defeated Bangladesh, in the season opener USA showed their top-notch performance against Canada so can’t take any team lightly and so need to be prepared for every challenge. Paul Stirling says:
“If we get to the stage where we’re facing Pakistan in a ‘winner-takes-all’ we’d probably be happy but if we look too far ahead and look at that scenario we’ll fall short,”
“We know how daunting a task it will be against four strong teams, not just two – the India game is probably the trickiest of the four first up so we aim to put in a really good performance, then we’ve got two huge games coming up after that against the USA and Canada. The USA beating Bangladesh just cements the idea that we have to be at our best to beat them,”