Fri, 11 Mar 2011 - West Indies vs Ireland, World Cup 2011, 27th match Group B - Bulletin

27th Match

Group B match

Ireland versus West Indies

Venue: Punjab Cricket Association Stadium, Mohali, Chandigarh

Start Time: 09:30 am (IST)

All-round Windies achieve hat trick of victories

West Indies achieved a hat trick of victories by defeating Ireland by 44 runs in group B game played at Punjab Cricket Stadium, Mohali.

After making a big total of 275 runs, West Indies bowlers were impressive to bowl out Ireland for 231 runs to score their third consecutive win in the tournament.

Ireland, who thanks to fourth wicket partnership of 91 runs threatened to take the game away from West Indies, lost too many wickets failing to stage another upset.

West Indies bowlers were on the money and kept pegging away by taking wickets at crucial junctures.
Suleiman Benn and skipper Darren Sammy continued their good performance with the ball by sharing seven wickets between two of them.

After reduced to 86 for the loss of three wickets, Ed Joyce and Gary Wilson combined together for the fourth wicket to stage a recovery and keeping the required run rate under the control.

Joyce played his best innings of the tournament scoring his 84 off 106 runs including nine this to the fence and Gary Wilson also was in good form playing run a ball innings bringing Ireland right back into the game.

Debutant Andrew Russell had other ideas dishing up a terrific yorker to castle Ed Joyce and triggered a collapse that saw wickets falling in a heap.

Sammy dented the Irish hopes further by getting the wickets of Gary Wilson (61 runs) and danger man Kevin O’brein who was caught brilliantly by Pollard in the deep. Benn was again in good wicket taking form taking four wickets and giving away 53 runs in his ten overs.

Kemar Roach was amongst the wickets getting a prized wicket of Mooney while Botha was run out by a brilliant piece of fielding by Sammy.

After asked to bat first by Ireland, West Indies overcame slow start from their openers to post a score of 275 runs helped largely due to maiden century from Devon Smith and 55-ball 94 by Kieran Pollard.

Smith was very sedate in his innings while Pollard was aggressive in his innings all throughout his innings hitting some lusty blows to give hard time in the death overs to disciplined Irish bowlers.

Smith and Chanderpaul, who opened the innings in Gayle’s absence, started off very cautiously scoring just above three runs per over in first fifteen overs. Chanderpaul lacked fluency in his scratchy innings of 35 runs off 62 balls before getting caught at short covers off Kevin O’brein. Kevin got another wicket in the same over yorking Darren Bravo for nought with team score at 89 in 25th over.

Smith, however, kept going picking up the gaps and hitting odd boundary in between while Sarwan also was not in his elements taking 19 balls for his 10 before being holed out in the deep off Dockrell.

This brought Pollard at the crease and scoring picked up at a rapid rate with Pollard showing aggression and his hitting abilities from the moment he came in. Meanwhile Smith complied his first ODI century on his way to 107-run inning off 133 balls including eleven fours and a straight six that brought up his century.

While Pollard kept clearing the boundary non-chalantly, Darren Sammy, Devon Thomas and Andrew Russell went without doing anything substantial.

Pollard hit eight fours and five huge sixes in his innings propelling his team to a big score and once he was holed out in the deep six short of his first century wickets fell quickly with team getting all out on the last ball of the innings.

Kevin O’brein was the most successful bowler for Ireland taking four wickets but gave away 71 runs in his nine overs while Mooney was also amongst wickets taking two of them.

Man of the Match: Kieron Pollard

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