An excellent unbeaten 119-run partnership helped Ireland defeat Scotland in their Group B match at the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup in Australia on Wednesday.
The Scots went into the clash off the back of a brilliant victory over West Indies on Monday while Ireland had opened with a loss to Zimbabwe.
At the Bellerive Oval in Hobart things were going well for Scotland as they posted 176-5 batting first – opener Michael Jones making 86 – and then reduced Ireland to 61-4 after 9.3 overs of their reply.
However, Curtis Campher and George Dockrell came together at the crease and then put on a hundred run plus partnership for the fifth wicket to see the Irish over the line with an over to spare. Player of the match Campher made 72 not out off just 32 balls and Dockrell 39 not out off 27 balls as they got to 180-4 and completed a six wicket triumph.
“We have to move on from this game, we’ll learn what we can from it, but we know that in these group scenarios it’s never straight forward,” Scotland captain Richie Berrington said.
“We’ll reflect well on this and come back stronger on Friday.
“In our innings I thought Michael Jones was superb. He started off really well and just went on from there while there were a couple of other guys who chipped in and we had a couple of good partnerships in there.
“As a result, we were pretty happy with the first innings score, maybe we missed out on a few runs at the back end, but we knew with that score on the board we had given ourselves a good chance.
“In the Ireland reply I thought the boys up front were excellent getting early wickets, we certainly put Ireland under pressure.
“However, you have to give credit to Ireland and the boys that put that partnership together.
“Our focus now is on moving on from here and putting in a good performance on Friday.”
As with the West Indies game, Scotland batted first and this time it was Jones scoring runs opening the innings rather than George Munsey.
Munsey, who made a half century on Monday, fell off just the seventh ball of the innings here for one, but 86 from Jones – including six 4s and four 6s over 55 balls – and 28 and 37 from Matthew Cross and Berrington respectively meant that when they were 170-4 off 19 overs.
They ended up on 176-5, Calum MacLeod the other man out for 0 while Michael Leask finished on 17 not out.
Campher took 2-9 from two overs for Ireland while Mark Adair bowled well with 1-23 from his four overs.
When Scotland reduced Ireland to 61-4 in their reply it was all going well.
Brad Wheal, Safyaan Sharif, Mark Watt and Leask had all taken wickets before Campher and Dockrell, batting at number five and number six respectively, took things away from them in pretty spectacular style.
Wheal took 1-25 from his four overs, Leask 1-16 from two overs.
Next for Scotland is their final Group B match of the first phase versus Zimbabwe at 9am UK time on Friday at the same venue.
With Ireland and the West Indies playing four hours earlier and two teams from four progressing to the second phase, this group looks like going right to the wire.
