Ireland quietly confident

The Irish cricketers were in a joyous mood in their practice session at the Academy Ground beside the Sher-e-Bangla National Stadium yesterday. They are set to meet the Tigers in their first match of the World Cup on Friday. Photo: Anisur Rahman

Whilst Bangladesh woke up to the grim reality of losing against India in the much-hyped opener of the World Cup, their next opponents, Ireland were in a relaxed mood the next morning.
And why would they not be. The Irish are running high on the back of two very good practice matches, one of which was a 4 wicket win over Zimbabwe. In the other they ran New Zealand very close before conceding a 32-run defeat. And of course there is the history between the sides; Bangladesh fell to Ireland in their last World Cup meeting 2007.
Naturally then, the feeling of being quietly confident was evident when William Porterfield, the Irish skipper met the press at the end of a two-hour practice session at the Academy Ground beside the Sher-e-Bangla National Stadium yesterday.
“The way we are playing right now, we'll be confident going into the match on Friday,” said Porterfield.
“The conditions here might be different from what we are used to, but not necessarily a difficult one. We've had some good preparation. We played pretty well in the last couple of warm up games, picked up the momentum, and we will be feeling pretty confident.”
From a broader perspective, the confidence stems from the constant rise in the graph of Irish cricket in the last four years since they made their World Cup debut and managed to beat Bangladesh and Pakistan.
“We have made massive strides in recent years. In the last World Cup we were pretty much unknown. People were struggling to relate Ireland with a cricket nation, but we have put Ireland on the cricket map now. Most of the players have also become fulltime cricketers in the last 18 months which makes a massive difference to our cricket.”
The Irish landed in Dhaka on the 17th of February after playing the two warm-up matches in India. They had a fun time playing golf on Thursday when the Tigers were perspiring against the Indians. The players took a few glimpses of the match on television, but declined to read much into the result of Thursday's match. Rather they looked at concentrating on their own game.
“We know if we can perform we can beat full member nations. We have done that in the last couple of seasons. So we are pretty confident that whoever the opposition are, we are capable enough to beat them on our day. We will go out there and back ourselves on our abilities.”