Balbirnie, McCarthy give Ireland their biggest win against a Full Member
Balbirnie scored his ninth ODI hundred and McCarthy took a four-for as Ireland beat West Indies by 124 runs
Balbirnie scored his ninth ODI hundred and McCarthy took a four-for as Ireland beat West Indies by 124 runs
Scorer: Chetan Kumar | Commentator: Rvel Zahid
Thank you for your company throughout this game. This is Rvel Zahid, signing off on behalf of Rashad Mahbub and our scorer, Chetan Kumar. Goodbye and goodnight!
West Indies were going nowhere in their reply as the Ireland pacers were on top of their game extracting every bit of juice from the surface, hitting nagging lines and lengths and reaping the rewards. The top order was never allowed to break free and the pressure of too many dot balls eventually forced errors as they tried to break the shackles. Chase and Forde showed gritty resistance but once the former fell, the fight completely faded. Dockrell mopped up the tail with his clever spin methods while McCarthy inflicted the early damage and finished with four crucial wickets. Ireland didn't put a foot wrong throughout the day. Andy Balbirnie's composed century and Paul Stirling solid hand paved the way for a par score. Later, Harry Tector's fifty and Lorcan Tucker's quickfire 30 pushed the score past 300 which proved more than enough on a spicy surface
Andy Balbirnie, Player of the Match: We had a tough few weeks with injuries but guys have stepped up. 10000 runs is an amazing achievement (on Paul). None of us knew about that achievement but he has been an incredible player for Ireland. Hope he can keep contributing this way. That's the role I have been given (to bat deep). Some days it will come off, some days it won't. Lucky it came off today. Historically we have been slow to get into a series with our better performances coming later on. But this sets up nicely for us. We know the conditions, they know the conditions, need to pat ourselves down tomorrow and go again on Friday
Paul Stirling, Ireland Captain: Everything went as we spoke...absolutely delighted. They have come in and not looked out of place, great thing for Irish cricket to see the depth of the talent. I had no idea, delighted to get there. It was something I dreamt of (scoring 10,000 runs) as a kid but as a professional cricketer you can't dwell too much about it. He played a typical Balbirnie innings; saw off the new ball and batted throughout the innings. The way Lorcan and Harry came in was pretty special
Shai Hope, West Indies Captain: We have got to make sure we get wickets with the new ball and then the batters need to set the tone in the powerplay. Hopefully, we can correct these things in the next game. We needed to show more intent. The guys hit the right lengths and the rest is history. We just need to set the tone from the start. We know the firepower we have with quality players coming in at back end. This series isn't over yet... we'll take this blow since they outplayed us
MW Forde c Little b BJ McCarthy 38 (88m 48b 4x4 1x6) SR: 79.16
G Motie c Mayes b Dockrell 8 (2m 4b 2x4 0x6) SR: 200
Balbirnie scored his ninth ODI hundred and McCarthy took a four-for as Ireland beat West Indies by 124 runs
Mark Adair will miss the ODI series as he recovers from injury but is expected back for the T20Is