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TAROUBA, Trinidad – A clinical display by India saw the overwhelming favourites defeat a young Ireland Under-19s Men’s team by 174 runs in the Group Stages of the ICC Under-19s Men’s Cricket World Cup today.
After winning the toss and electing to bowl first, Irish captain Tim Tector may soon have been questioning his own call as the Indian openers set about dominating the early overs. Harnoor Singh (88 from 101 balls) and Angkrish Raghuvanshi (79 from 79 balls) put on a 164-run opening stand in just over 25 overs. The pair took full toll on balls that were short-of-a-length, particularly Raghuvanshi who hit 10 fours and two big sixes in his run-a-ball knock.

After the first wicket fell in the 26th over, left-arm spinner Jamie Forbes made his way into the game, bowling economically with his 1-38 from 10 overs helping to peg the Indian batters run rate back through the middle overs.

Pace bowler Muzamil Sherzad claimed three late wickets, but the Indian batters took 42 off the last three overs to finish their innings with a flourish on 307-5. All-rounder Rajvardhan Hangargekar, who smashed five maximums in a cameo of 39* from 17 balls, frustrated the death bowlers by blasting even seemingly good length deliveries over the long-on boundary.

In response, Ireland’s top-order batters fell in quick succession Liam Doherty (7), David Vincent (8) and Jack Dickson (0) succumbing to the early aggression of the Indian pacemen.

Captain Tector looked comfortable as he sought to stabilise the Irish innings, hitting two sparkling cover drives to the boundary. However, just as he looked set to launch a counter-attacking innings, he flashed at a wide ball from Garv Sangwan and was caught in the gully.

Last match centurion Joshua Cox, who had started slowly with just three runs from his first 26 balls, began to move up through the gears striking three fours and a stylishly hooked six over backward square leg. On 28, however, he walked across his stumps and tried to steer a wide ball through the vacant slip region, but just feathered an edge through to Dinesh Bana behind the stumps. Bana lunged to take a relatively straightforward catch, but the ball popped out of his gloves – not once, but twice – finally completing the catch on the third chance.

St Johnston’s Scott Macbeth powered late runs – his 32 from 40 balls including three fours and two eye-catching sixes. The first six was a pick-up shot off his pads that seemed to glide smoothly in an arc over the mid-wicket fence, wile his second maximum being a commanding pull shot over the same part of the outfield.

Nathan McGuire (14) and Matthew Humphreys (16*) added consolation runs, but Ireland was all out in the 39th over for 133.

Ireland’s last Group Stage match is back at the same venue on Friday against South Africa in a winner-takes-all match where the victorious side will advance to the Super 8 stage, and the defeated side will go into the Plate draw.

After the match, Tim Tector said:

“You have to give credit to India – they came out with the bat and put pressure on us straight away. We didn’t bowl well upfront, but in the middle period we dragged them back pretty well, so they were a few positives we can take – but full credit to India today.

“After the start they had, we were pretty happy to restrict them to 300 – the wicket was pretty good, there wasn’t a huge amount of movement on it, and with the outfield you could get a lot of value for your shots. It was always going to be a challenge for us, but we were going to give it our best shot – unfortunately, it didn’t come off for us.

“They then got a few early wickets which put us on the back foot – I thought we could have been a bit more proactive looking for those quick runs in the ring, while waiting for the bad ball, but credit to India – they didn’t give us much width or many bad balls.

“It was great to get a game here today, we play South Africa here on Friday which is now just a straight shoot-out for the Super 8s, we’ll go away and prepare then be ready for Friday.”

MATCH SUMMARY

Ireland Under-19s Men v India Under-19s Men, U19 World Cup Group Stage, Trinidad, 19 January 2022

India 307-5 (50 overs: H Singh 88, A Raghuvanshi 79; M Sherzad 3-79)
Ireland 133 (39 overs: S Macbeth 32, J Cox 28; G Kaushal 2-11)

India Under-19s won by 174 runs

See full scorecard

Craig Easdown
Ireland Under-19s were defeated, but showed signs of resilience and fight
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Connaught