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Ireland Women won their opening match at the World T20 Qualifiers this morning with a comprehensive eight wicket victory over European rivals The Netherlands. We spoke to opening batter Clare Shillington after the match to talk about the day and look forward to the China match on Sunday.
Shillington showed she was in good form in the final warm up match with an unbeaten 46, and she carried that form into the tournament proper hitting six boundaries on her way to a brisk 33 as Ireland reached their target with more than eight overs to spare.

“It’s great to get off to a winning start. It was a comfortable win in the end but there was some definite first match nerves in our bowling and fielding performance and to be really picky we should have won by ten wickets” said Shillington after the match.

“We’ve set high standards for ourselves and we want to be hitting them in every game but that being said we’re delighted with the win.”

Lucy O’Reilly was singled out by Shillington for her bowling performance, with the 16-year old bowling an extremely tight four overs and finishing off the innings with a great final over.

“Although Lucy didn’t take any wickets I thought her first spell got us back on top when things were looking like they could get away slightly. She bowled extremely tightly and in the end brought the much needed first wicket from the other end. She also closed out the innings with 4 dots and 2 singles.”

The bowlers will all be looking to make a similar impact in the second match against China, which starts at 10am local time (3am Irish time) on Sunday. The opening day nerves have settled and although the Chinese are a side the Irish will know little about, the bowlers will be keen to hit their line and length and see how the Chinese batters cope with pressure.

China beat Scotland in their warm up match, but had their top four bat twice in that game, while in their opening match of the tournament lost heavily to Zimbabwe after batting first and only posting 88-5 and a patient top order seemed to place more value on keeping their wicket as oppose to scoring quickly.

Two wickets in the final two balls of the innings meant the middle and lower order have still not been exposed and Ireland will be keen to get a couple of early wickets and expose what is likely to be a weak lower order.

One thing Shillington and opening partner Cecelia Joyce did very well was stamp some authority on the tournament, showing their positive intent and ability to score quickly, something Shillington was conscious of.

“We were positive from the start with our running and punishment of bad bowling which hopefully settled any nerves in dugout, if there were any!”

Before the game there had been a lot of talk about the pitches being slow and outfields making it difficult to score boundaries, but Joyce and Shillington seemed to disprove that with the boundaries they hit during their 74-run partnership.

“It was actually a much better deck than the warmup games, hard and a bit more carry but the outfield was extremely slow.

“It was difficult to push singles in the ring but we managed to find gaps and score early boundaries which pushed the Dutch back. Although cooler today the heat is still a big factor.”

After today’s game was held at the Asian Institute of Technology ground, Sunday’s clash with China will be at the Thailand Cricket Ground so the squad will need to adapt to what could be slightly different conditions.

Earlier today Bangladesh made 105 on the Thailand Cricket Ground, but did so the hard way, hitting just three boundaries and working hard between the wickets. That was comfortably the highest score of the day at that ground though, with Thailand bowled out for 32 in reply, and Scotland bowling out Papua New Guinea for 53 before reaching their target in the fifteenth over for the loss of two wickets.

Once again you can follow all the action on cricetireland.ie and through our official twitter feed @irelandcricket.

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