No silver lining to be found as clouds descend

IT’S the same old feeling for us. Once again, the weather has played its part in halting our progress in the World Twenty20. I think 33 per cent of all our games at World T20 tournaments have been rain-affected. On Thursday evening, we saw the weather forecast and knew there was a strong chance of rain.

Pulling the curtains back on Friday morning, I saw the downpour and feared the worst. But we can’t use that downpour as much of an excuse. Losing to Oman meant we were always facing an uphill task against Bangladesh.

The final 20 minutes of Wednesday’s match were as poor as I can recall any Irish team playing during my career. Nothing went right in that last 20 minutes and I don’t ever remember that happening before when I was wearing an Irish shirt.

While Oman did bat well, we made some very poor decisions and only have ourselves to blame for the upset. What made it worse was that we were in control for 80 per cent of Wednesday’s game.

We batted sensibly and felt that a total of 155 was around par for the wicket. We were fully confident that our bowling attack was good enough to restrict Oman. It should have been.

A few bad overs early on gave them momentum and we soon realised that were in a dog-fight. We fought back – as we always do – and even managed to get into a winning position. But then things just came apart in the last 20 minutes.

When the rain eventually relented on Friday afternoon, for about 90 minutes,

it was just long enough for us to win the toss and decide to bowl. The following eight overs did not go to plan.

Our fielding let us down when it was under pressure And yet again, our bowling – including mine much to my annoyance – didn’t have any answer to the aggressive start of Tamim Iqbal and Soumya Sarkar.

All that’s left for us today is to restore some pride against Holland and finish the tournament with a win. We want to leave India with something to show for our time here. We are hurting after Wednesday’s defeat and we didn’t really get the opportunity to channel that hurt.

That is what we will hope to do when we take the field today. Provided this rain stops for a few hours.

RARE MOMENT: Gary Wilson sweeps a ball to the boundary against OmanIRELAND coach John Bracewell continued to defend his players, despite their exit from the World Twenty20 in India at the group stage.A first ever defeat to 17th ranked Oman – Ireland’s third in a row in T20 cricket – ensured that Friday’s nights abandoned game against Bangladesh ended their interest in the tournament before today’s dead rubber against Netherlands.‘Our guys are absolutely devastated,’ said Bracewell. ‘We haven’t played to our potential or our skill levels, but I can’t fault their preparation and their work ethic to try and succeed.’