(Source ESPN)
Ireland head coach Heinrich Malan expressed his disappointment with the pitch conditions during their T20 World Cup Group A match against India. He emphasized the importance of a quality playing surface, which, according to him, was lacking in recent games at the Nassau County International Cricket Stadium.
Malan’s remarks follow India’s convincing eight-wicket victory over Ireland at the Nassau County International Cricket Stadium, where Ireland was bowled out for a mere 96 runs. The pitch exhibited excessive swing and unpredictable bounce, presenting uneven challenges throughout the game.
“When you play the game you need a really good surface or as good as surfaces you can get and unfortunately what we’ve seen over the last couple games just doesn’t necessarily live up to that. So hopefully, over the next day or so it can hopefully flatten out a little bit and we can see some good cricket come Friday,” he said in the post-match press conference.
At this venue on Monday, Sri Lanka struggled and were dismissed for just 77 runs, leading to South Africa’s victory on a demanding pitch. With Ireland scheduled to play Canada here on Friday, followed by India facing Pakistan in a highly anticipated clash on Sunday, the pitches at New York are expected to undergo further scrutiny in Wednesday’s match.
“I think we just want to see good cricket, don’t we? It’s the pinnacle of our event and it doesn’t have to be 200 play all the time, it just needs to be an equal contest and I think if you look at today it is debatable where that was,” added Malan.
India’s fast bowlers, spearheaded by Hardik Pandya’s impressive figures of 3-27, dismantled Ireland’s batting lineup by collectively claiming eight wickets. Ireland faced difficulties in adjusting and revising their batting strategies on a challenging pitch. Gareth Delany emerged as the top scorer for Ireland with 26 runs and contributed to partnerships of 27 and 19 for the ninth and tenth wickets, respectively.
“When we were finding it really tough, we were talking about if we can get to 130-140 and if we can back that up in the execution of our skills from a bowling point of view that’s probably, we were looking at to try and get to at one stage.
“If you look at the way they bowled up front, it was obviously pretty challenging. We had to change our game plan a couple of times and unfortunately it just didn’t go the way we wanted it to work out. Mike Tyson said any game plan change, you get punched in the face, and I think there was some serious bowling out there.
“They’ve got three or four serious quick bowlers which we’ve seen over a period of time who can perform at this level and look, we communicated well. But it’s one thing talking about it and another thing executing it under pressure when there’s some quality that’s coming down at you,” stated Malan.
In conclusion, he remarked that despite Ireland’s thorough preparation regarding the pitch conditions in New York, it did not translate into an advantage against India.“We tried to do as much homework as we could even though we weren’t at the ground training or playing on the surface.
“We spoke to the groundsman; the scores were totally different in that warm-up game that was played on that surface. So, we weren’t necessarily expecting it to behave like it did, but again we’ve got to be better with our execution of our skills and that’s obviously something we’ll reflect on.”
