Josh Little and Mark Adair were punished for bowling too short with the new ball, and Craig Young admitted that Ireland missed their lengths.
“None of us are quite [Bhuvneshwar] Kumar, we haven’t got the skills them boys have but we are lucky that we know Malahide quite well and we know the lengths to bowl, albeit we don’t always hit them straight away,” Young said after the first game. “Again, you can’t go too full because they’ll blast you over your head, you’ve got that small margin. We got the line right a lot of the time, but the length is what let us down.”
A better powerplay with both bat and ball for Ireland could somewhat narrow the gap between the two teams.
Ireland LLWWW (last five completed matches, most recent first)
India WWWLL
Ireland (probable): 1 Paul Stirling, 2 Andy Balbirnie (capt), 3 Gareth Delany, 4 Harry Tector, 5 Lorcan Tucker (wk), 6 George Dockrell, 7 Mark Adair, 8 Andy McBrine, 9 Craig Young, 10 Josh Little, 11 Conor Olphert
If Gaikwad isn’t fit, India could hand a debut to Tripathi or recall Sanju Samson. Harshal Patel will miss out once again, if India give Malik another game or bring in Arshdeep Singh.
India (probable): 1 Ishan Kishan, 2 Ruturaj Gaikwad/Rahul Tripathi/Sanju Samson, 3 Suryakumar Yadav, 4 Deepak Hooda, 5 Hardik Pandya (capt), 6 Dinesh Karthik (wk), 7 Axar Patel, 8 Bhuvneshwar Kumar, 9 Avesh Khan, 10 Umran Malik/Arshdeep Singh 11 Yuzvendra Chahal
Intermittent showers on Sunday meant the ball didn’t quite come onto the bat as it often does in Malahide. If rain stays away, the pitch might favour the batters.
“He played some fantastic shots, and obviously he’s 22, and I’ve given him a bat as well. So maybe he can score some more sixes and maybe get an IPL contract and I wish him luck.” India and IPL-winning captain Hardik Pandya is impressed with Harry Tector
“Our lads were good enough. We came up against a very, very good team and went toe-to-toe with them for a good 80-85% of the game. We just need to find that extra bit on Tuesday.” Craig Young counts Ireland’s positives