April 30th, 2010 : West Indies vs Ireland Live action Starts from : 21:00 GMT (02:30 IST next monday morning) and will be telecasted live on Cricketwalk.com. Hosts West Indies will play Ireland in the second game of the tournament at Guyana and the first one from the Group D. England is the third side in the same group. West Indies are the semi-finalists from the previous year, but did not have a good start to their warm-up matches when they lost to the Kiwis. For Ireland, though, it was worse. After having reached the second round in the previous year by beating Bangladesh, they lost to Afghanistan in the warm-up game. For the Irish side to be able to repeat their performances of the previous edition or of the 2007 World Cup, they will need to play much better than they have in the recent times.
Along with Pakistan, the hosts are the perennial dark horses for the title. Some of the world’s biggest Twenty20 superstars like Chris Gayle and Kieron Pollard feature in their ranks, which makes them a dangerous force. Kieron Pollard may be the one that the whole of West Indies, will want to watch, after his exploits in the IPL. Yet, there is this inexplicable loss of form that they seem to suffer when representing the national side that has them languishing at the bottom of the test-playing nations pile. However, in a 20-over format, technique goes out of the window, and the West Indies could very well make the final 4.
Ireland on the other side lost to Afghanistan in the qualifiers final and then again in the warm-up game. They are a good budding side, arguably the most consistent among non-test-playing nations. They have quite a few fairly experienced players in their ranks, but are unfortunate to lose countryman Eoin Morgan to the English. The problem with the Irish batting has been its lack of consistency. They have had four warm-up games under their belt and no one batsman has performed well in even three of the four games. There will be a lot of dependence on Niall O’Brien, their wicket-keeper, who has a capability of picking up the really big scores, whereas Paul Stirling will hope to add on to his warm-up half century. However, all eyes will be on their captain and opening batsman, William Porterfield, who will need to recapture some of his previous form to lead the side.
Match Details
Match – ICC Twenty20 World Cup 2010, 2nd Match Group D
Date – April 30,2010 (Saturday)
Time – 21:00 GMT, 2:30 IST (early morning next day)
Venue – Providence Stadium, Guyana
ICC T20 World Cup 2010 Team Squads :
Ireland Twenty20 World Cup Squad: William Porterfield (Captain), Peter Connell, Trent Johnston, Alex Cusack, Andre Botha, Gary Kidd, Niall O’Brien, Paul Stirling, Gary Wilson (WK), Andrew White, Boyd Rankin, John Mooney, Nigel Jones, George Dockrell.
West Indies Twenty20 World Cup Squad: Chris Gayle (Captain), S.Chanderpaul, D.Bravo, K.Pollard, Andre Fletcher, Ramnaresh Sarwan, Wavell Hinds, N.Deonariane, S.Benn, N.Miller, Denesh Ramdin (WK), Ravi Rampaul, Kemar Roach, Darren Sammy, Jerome Taylor.
