ICC T20 WORLD CUP 2021

October 22, 2021

Andrew Balbirnie

Sharjah Stadium

Ireland

Post Match Media Conference

Namibia 126/2, Ireland 125/8

Q. Commiserations today. In terms of winning the toss and deciding to bat, what was that based on on that track?

ANDREW BALBIRNIE: Yeah, we thought it would be a fairly slow and low wicket, which it proved to be. I think if we had got 140 we would have been really in the game, but with 125 you've really got to bowl and field well and take your chances.

Yeah, it's disappointing with the start we got that we couldn't get to 140 at least, but I thought they chased it pretty well and their skipper played an outstanding knock, and obviously David Wiese came in at the end and took the game away from us. But yeah, look, 20 or 30 runs short, particularly haven't got off to a good start.

Q. Time and time again we haven't seen the middle order back up the likes of Stirno, Kevin hasn't had a great knock, he got a couple today all right and yourself. But there's a problem with the middle order; it's not just backing up the openers, and especially in a competition like this.

ANDREW BALBIRNIE: Yeah, look, it's obviously -- we know how good our two lads up top, and it's disappointing from our point of view today that we couldn't back it up.

What I will say is that it wasn't an easy wicket to come in and just score from a run a ball. Obviously David Wiese came in and did just that, but he's obviously a powerful player.

But I can't really fault the guys, the way they've trained and worked to this point. I'm not going to sit down and blame the middle order. I think we've come a long way, but we've also got to find our consistency, and hopefully with more cricket we can do that.

Q. It was a very strange, I suppose, middle section of their reply where you had them bogged down and they were over eight an over required. Perhaps you should have left Green there, particularly as you knew that Wiese was coming in after him, the big hitter.

ANDREW BALBIRNIE: Yeah, I don't think you can say you can just let someone bat. You want to take --

Q. I understand that, but they just got into a situation where they were getting bogged down. Wiese changed the game really, didn't he, when he came in.

ANDREW BALBIRNIE: Yeah, he did, and that's the beauty of having wickets in hand, that you can send a message out for a guy to go out and just try to score quickly, and they were able to that.

They're good cricketers. We didn't underestimate them; we know how good a team they are, and they've played some really good cricket and they outplayed us today and deserve their place in the Super 12s.

We've got to head home, have a good hard look at ourselves and our plans going forward and hopefully qualify for World Cup next year.

Q. Where does that leave your T20 squad then? A lot of soul searching I presume to do.

ANDREW BALBIRNIE: Yeah, but at the end of the day it's only a game. We're bitterly disappointed and the guys are bitterly disappointed back home, but we're moving in the right direction I feel. We've got a good young squad who are hungry to learn. It wasn't our day today and so be it. We've had some great days in the last couple years, and today wasn't one of them. But yeah, look, credit to Namibia and the way they played today.

Q. Just picking up on something you said there, without being too hard on you at this stage, I know you're very down, but do you really think we have moved on after this tournament?

ANDREW BALBIRNIE: Yeah, I think so. Our T20 cricket has been inconsistent. That has been a big issue and you can say that tournament has been inconsistent for us, but guys are improving. I'm seeing it day in and day out.

They're a young and inexperienced squad. They're going to learn from this. They're going to hurt from this, like all of us, of course, but we've got to keep moving forward and keep trying to adapt our game.

We came up short today, but I know the guys are going to want to -- once we kind of have a week or two off back home will want to improve their skills so that the next time comes around they'll be better for it.

Q. We just didn't get enough runs on the day; couldn't even score a run a ball after the powerplay.

ANDREW BALBIRNIE: Yeah, that's going to be the area where we probably lost the game.

You know, my innings didn't help us either. I found it really tough out there and couldn't really get going. They bowled well. They bowled out the stumps and made it hard for us to score.

Yeah, that's the way it went. I thought we had a really good powerplay. It was a fairly slow wicket throughout, but the way Paul and Kevin got us off to a really fast start, we thought that we could get 150 plus, so to only get 125 was bitterly disappointing, but yeah.

Q. The non-review against Erasmus, I presume you heard that that would have been out. Did Mark think he had hit the ball?

ANDREW BALBIRNIE: Yeah, there was a couple of conversations had, and yeah, I didn't go for it, and that's the way it goes. I did have a good look at it after the 15 seconds on the big screen and saw that it would have been out, but that happens, and that's obviously a mistake, but that's down to me and my decision making at that moment.

We've had some DRS decisions go our way in the past and that wasn't one of them. Yeah, it's a shame Mark pulled up that injury. He's been such an impressive bowler for us in this tournament and in T20 international. Yeah, missed the trick there.

Q. That certainly didn't help him going off, and finally Stirno, he didn't come back on the field, did he? Has he had a problem, as well?

ANDREW BALBIRNIE: Yeah, I think he may -- I'm not exactly sure. There was a plaster on his finger, but I haven't really spoken to him since I've come off. Yeah, it was tough losing him, as well. He's obviously someone I talk to a lot during the innings, and yeah, just hope the two of them are okay, but I don't know exactly what's wrong with them at this moment.

Q. Now you'll have to qualify for the next tournament, obviously.

ANDREW BALBIRNIE: Yeah, we were fully aware of the cherry at the end of this game, to qualify for the next phase but also to qualify for the next World Cup. That's not to be. We're going to have to go to a qualifying tournament for the next qualifier. That'll give us more experience under our belts. We don't exactly know where it is, I don't think, but yeah, that's the way we've got to do it, and we'll get our heads in that when the time comes around.

Q. Could you just talk a little bit about the batting approach? Obviously I think we've seen in IPL the team that wins the powerplay has won the most games. Was that something on your mind going into it?

ANDREW BALBIRNIE: Yeah, I think so, and I think it was definitely a new ball sort of wicket. It came on a bit nicer than maybe the middle overs. Paul and Kevin have usually got us off to pretty good starts, but that was certainly I think our best powerplay in a few games.

That's the disappointing thing is we were ahead of the 8-ball and we managed to not counter on that and make a productive score from it. But that's the way it goes, and the middle order including myself, need to go away and work on ways to score on wickets that are difficult.

Q. Talk about conditions a bit more generally in terms of how tough it was to score even sort of ones and twos out there. Really hard work?

ANDREW BALBIRNIE: Yeah, it was tough, but we knew that. We had seen the IPL games that had been played here and were aware that this wicket maybe wasn't as flat as it used to be. But we've got to adapt to that, and I thought the Namibians probably did it better than us on the day. They went through that middle period where it was tricky but came out the back end of it because they didn't lose wickets.

Yeah, it was tricky conditions, but it was the same for both teams.

Q. You were way ahead of the game after their powerplay it seemed like, given how sort of few runs they'd scored. Was that how it felt out there? Did you feel like you'd restricted them well enough that you were in front?

ANDREW BALBIRNIE: Yeah, I did, yeah. I think we were having a good look at the required run rate and where that was at, but we were also aware that we probably needed to take a couple more wickets for it to work in our favour. Losing Mark didn't help, as I mentioned earlier, but yeah, I thought we bowled pretty well.

I think we had two pretty good powerplays and just that sort of that middle period where we couldn't up the run rate with the bat and also take wickets with the ball. Things to work on, but yeah, it's hugely disappointing.

Q. The bowling was probably the strongest of all the assets that Ireland brought into the World Cup. Can I get a word on Curtis, Josh, Mark, all the guys just throughout three games, how you thought they did?

ANDREW BALBIRNIE: Yeah, they've had a superb week. Josh certainly has been the leader of the pack, but he's been brilliantly backed up by Curtis, Mark and Craig. Craig obviously missed the first game and he came back and bowled really well in the second game. So yeah, we have a good sort of bit of depth in our seam attack now. We've got to bring it all together whenever we play these big games and put in that performance that warrants getting into the next phase, and I think our performance today doesn't do that, and that's the disappointing thing is that we're going to go back disappointed in the way we kind of performed today.

Q. Do you think more tests against just bigger nations like Sri Lanka, for example, in the next while would help you guys get used to playing against bigger sides and put in bigger performances?

ANDREW BALBIRNIE: No, not necessarily, I think just more games against good teams. I think we've played three really good teams this week, and we're going to get better from that. I don't think necessarily we need to play top-8 teams.

You can see the depth in cricket around the world when you're looking at some of the teams around like Scotland, Oman, Namibia, teams like that are good cricket teams, and we've got to keep playing these good cricket teams so we can get better. I don't think you necessarily need to play the top nations as regularly.

Q. Did the performance of Namibia take you by a bit of a surprise? You know, basically making it to the Super 12s, some team which did not expect to reach there?

ANDREW BALBIRNIE: No, it didn't take us by surprise. We obviously were there for a lot of their chase against the Netherlands the other day. We played them in the qualifiers in 2019 and that was a pretty close game, as well. But no, we certainly didn't take them lightly.

Like I said earlier, we just didn't put in a performance that warranted winning a game of cricket, and we've got to live with that and that's fine. We'll move on, but I think it's going to be a tough sort of 24 hours to sit back and look back on what we could have done and maybe should have done.

Q. (No microphone.)

ANDREW BALBIRNIE: That's a good question. We obviously didn't start that well in our prep period. We had a bad loss against UAE in a series there. We managed to come back and string three good performances together, two warmup games and then the Dutch game.

I think the guys are just learning and they want to learn, and there was a good mix of kind of youth and experience in the squad, but at the end of the day if you're not getting the results, you've got to look at ourselves and see where we can get those results in a better place.

Yeah, I think it's been a really important tour for a lot of the young guys in that squad, but like I said, the chance for them to maybe go out and play the big boys next week would have been a chance in a lifetime. It's a shame that that won't be happening, but this time next year hopefully we'll be doing that.

Q. What's next going forward? Do you think you're still the right man?

ANDREW BALBIRNIE: As far as I'm aware I think we have a trip to the Caribbean in January for 50-over cricket, but before that I'm not too sure. A bit of time off, maybe put the cricket bag away for a couple of weeks and spend some family time, and I might watch a few of the games, but yeah, certainly be a tough couple of weeks. But we've got to stick in this together. It's a bad night for us tonight, but we move on and we go to the next round.