ICC T20 WORLD CUP 2022

October 26, 2022

Andrew Balbirnie

Melbourne Cricket Ground

Ireland

Post Match Media Conference

Ireland - 157, England -105/5

Q. Congratulations, Andrew. Let's start at the end. Moeen Ali hits 12 off three balls there and they're five runs off and the rain starts to come. Are you worried if they get another two balls in?

ANDREW BALBIRNIE: The way Moeen was playing, I was probably worried if they got another ball in. I said that to someone in the change room there. I've seen a lot of rain in my time playing cricket, and I've never been happier to see that rain come down when it did.

Yeah, it's one of those, you're always keeping an eye and see the dark clouds come in. You're not sure whether it's because the lights are on and there's a lot going on. You're starting to think, oh, should I have bowled a spinner?

But surreal. Absolutely surreal feeling. It happened so quickly. When I came off the pitch I was initially told there was 14 minutes until we started losing overs, and I wasn't sure that was right. It was obviously 14 minutes cutoff. So it all happened too quickly to take in what we had just achieved.

Q. You seem a lot more emotional now than you were on Friday after the West Indies win. Are you able to put this result into some sort of perspective?

ANDREW BALBIRNIE: I'm not sure. Friday was amazingly special because we had lost the first game of that round and we had to win two games and we won two games, one of the games we probably historically wouldn't have won against Scotland.

We came into this round knowing that any win we got would be a huge achievement. So to beat the best T20 team, in my opinion, you look through their 11 -- I looked through it this morning and I was looking at the matchups, and part of me was struggling to understand how we could -- if they show up, how we compete with them.

But we knew we batted pretty well without -- we were disappointed with how we batted at the end. We felt 175, 180 was a good score. We were under par. With the way these guys, this English team play, we knew we'd get chances if we bowled pretty well. We didn't take all the chances, but we took the important ones in the end.

Q. What was going through your head when you were thinking about juggling bowlers? We were all saying, you don't want to rain and have two overs of Mark Adair and one over of Josh Little in the bank. Obviously, you bowled Barry in the power play as well, and Fionn came on. And you talked about maybe you shouldn't have bowled the spinner at the end. What's it like with all those permutations going on in your head?

ANDREW BALBIRNIE: It's tough. You're two overs down, you're looking at the skies to see if it's going to rain. There's so much going on. It's a big ground. It's hard to get people's attention.

But Gareth's been bowling so well, I backed him. Moeen Ali plays spin very well. He's a world class player, as all of their guys are. But I back him 100 percent, and he's going to win those games more often than not.

I think all the bowlers had an impact in different ways. Fionn Hand came in for his game, bowled a bit loosely, but then bowled an absolute beauty to get one of the best players in the world out. You just love his enthusiasm. I thought he was actually going to end up in the stand he ran around so much. They're amazing moments to be a part of.

Q. Would you prefer if the game went the full 20 and you won it that way?

ANDREW BALBIRNIE: If we'd have won it, yes. But who knows what would have happened? They had so much batting left. I think that Sam Curran, Chris Woakes to come in and Moeen was starting to line it up.

Like I said, the rain came at a good time for us, but, yeah, we're on the board in this group, and it's an amazing feeling.

Q. Jos said it wasn't lucky, you totally deserved it. Would you agree? Despite the rain and the interruption.

ANDREW BALBIRNIE: I think -- you guys will have opinions naturally, but I think like, from where we sit, we felt like we deserved to win that game. We batted pretty well through the last five, six overs. We should have gotten 170, 180, no doubt, and that is something we'll look to work on.

It's not easy for new batters to come in, and you have someone like Mark Wood bowling as quickly as he does on a pitch that offered a bit of spongy bounce and was hard to pick up. We took our blows. There was a couple of helmet hits. I got hit in the finger. We rode the wave a bit and got the total on the board.

Q. You were injured yourself. Obviously disappointed to get out in the end?

ANDREW BALBIRNIE: You're always disappointed to get out no matter when you get out. But it was important for one of us in the kind of top three or four to get time in the middle. It was quite a difficult pitch to get in on.

I thought Lorcan Tucker's knock was really important because he got to pace the wicket quite quickly and his tempo was really good, and he kind of took the pressure off the other end. Even Stirling as well up top hit a couple of really sweet boundaries to get us going.

Yeah, scoring runs when you win is just the best feeling in the world as a professional cricketer. That's why I play the game.

Q. None of the bowlers let you down?

ANDREW BALBIRNIE: No. When you're playing a team like England, the all-round game these batters have, they're going to be under the pump from ball one no matter what overs they're bowling. We wanted to be aggressive. We wanted wicket taking balls. I think we did that. We created chances as well.

A big ground maybe suited us because a lot of balls went in the air. But, no, we never felt let down with the bowlers. It's not an easy game with T20 cricket, so I'm just very proud of that one.

Q. There have been so many special wins for our cricket over the years, '07 and '11 and so on, but where does this one rank, do you think, in your opinion?

ANDREW BALBIRNIE: I think T20 cricket is probably the best I've played on this team for a number of years. We've never had a result like this. Our T20 cricket has been hit and miss. It kind of culminated in the knockout in the first phase last year. We needed to address what we were doing in T20 cricket.

We knew the players we had. We needed everyone to buy into how we wanted to play. Like I said, we didn't get the score we wanted today, but guys were still trying to play that way. That's really kind of -- I'm very proud of that because that's the way we've been wanting to play the whole time.

Look, Eoin's been at every game we've ever played, and he'll probably tell you that's the best T20 win since Friday.

Q. And going back as well to the contribution of the team, back to '11, and Kevin O'Brien was the standout star or whatever. Today, in addition to yourself, it was much of a team performance, kind of an authentic win across the board. Is that how you see it?

ANDREW BALBIRNIE: Yeah. Look, Kevin recently retired. He's one of the best cricketers we've ever produced, but we knew we needed to kind of move on from players like that. What he contributed was amazing, and I probably didn't get the opportunity to say that at the time when he retired.

It wasn't easy to leave him out of squads, but certainly the guys who have come in have shown it's not just that generation that are a golden generation, this generation, with Harry Tector, Lorcan Tucker, Josh Little, they're a special group of cricketers. Mark Adair, there's so many of them. Fionn Hand showed today, he came in for maybe his third T20 and showed that he can have an impact on the game with the ball.

Yeah, that generation laid the platform for us to be professional cricketers. We wouldn't be here without them, and we have to acknowledge that. But we also have a duty to take the game as far forward as we can with a group of players.

Q. Hi, Andrew, congrats. Do you think that was won more with the bat or the bowl?

ANDREW BALBIRNIE: I would say with the bowl. I think, like I said, we were under par. Our bowlers, I think naturally the wicket of Jos in the first over sets the tone. He's the best T20 player in the world, in my opinion, and to get him in that first over just relaxed us.

I don't know if you're ever relaxed in that sort of environment, but it showed that we couldn't take chances because these guys will play their shots. If we bowl pretty accurately, we'll get our chances.

All the bowlers did that. We're a bit wide. We bowled a few too many wides, but that happens. To answer your question, it was won with the bowl.

Q. In England's power play, are you surprised they didn't come any harder at you to try to get above the rate in DLS?

ANDREW BALBIRNIE: Don't like saying it, but it was a tough pitch to read. It wasn't easy to get in on straight away. Naturally the way my innings played out, it was quite slow to start and picked up with the pace of the pitch. We knew that we'd have chances before the batters got set, and we managed to do that getting some -- when you say wickets in the power play, it hasn't always been important in the World Cup so far. The way the World Cup has panned out so far, wickets in the middle have been more important.

Certainly today with the pace of the pitch, it will be interesting to see this game this evening if it's played how the other teams go about it as well.

Q. Just with your own batting, was there kind of a bunches plan to try and take down Wood?

ANDREW BALBIRNIE: No, there was no conscious plan to do that. It was to survive from Mark Wood's end and see how we go at the other end.

Certainly we knew that their sort of middle overs, there would be a lot of variation. So a couple of us tried to set up for slower balls, and then if there was pace on, we'd back ourselves to hit it in the gaps.

The beauty of the MCG, only having played here today for the first time, there's a lot of big pockets. So if you hit the pockets, you can run twos and threes, and we were able to do that today.

Q. What do you make of the MCG, especially in light of what you've just done?

ANDREW BALBIRNIE: It will always be a special place because of tonight. It's an absolute -- we did the museum tour last night, and Ronnie Delany won a gold medal here in the Melbourne Olympics, and you see his name etched in the history of our sport forever.

I hope we've done something similar. I've always said cricket isn't a big game in Ireland. We're the flag bearers, and we want to make it as big as possible. But it's certainly an absolute pleasure to play here, to lead the first Irish team to ever play here. And we get to play here on Friday, which is such a thrill.

Q. How special was it going over to just that small band of green in the crowd? There's some pretty nice photos on social media of you guys with your fans, a little pocket there. How big was that?

ANDREW BALBIRNIE: That's why you play the game. I think a lot of our parents and families and friends extended their trip. Some of them had extended it before we started the tournament, which was a gamble, but it's paid off.

I know a lot of sports people say that, but cricket growing up wasn't a big sport in our country, and there was a lot of tracking up and down to Belfast for nets, and there wasn't a lot of indoor centres to train. So we had to go out to different places to train, and it was always your mom and dad.

It means a lot that they got through watching me play cricket, I know that. They probably get more stressed out than I do. It's crazy. They'll absolutely get a thrill from tonight, and hopefully we can continue that.

Q. You're blowing this group wide open. Do you think sometimes that people might underestimate teams like Ireland, who have come through that first round?

ANDREW BALBIRNIE: Sometimes. That was my first time ever playing England in a T20 international. We haven't played them since 2010 where the rain went the other way.

I'd like to think not because we've played a lot of cricket against good opposition, against New Zealand in the summer, against India, against Afghanistan. So we back ourselves to go out and compete against anyone. We want to play a certain way of cricket. If it comes off, great. If it doesn't, we'll go back the next day and play the same way.

The group is wide open. It's a huge game on Friday night for us. If we can go up to Brisbane with a win on Friday, who knows what will happen? The way the group is working out now, there could be a bit of rain around. If a team loses, one stick will be out. We've obviously lost one and won one, so we're kind of in the balance. We're just going to go out and enjoy ourselves.

We knew to get into this stage, all the pressure was on us last week. That was the most pressurized cricket we played via the qualifiers we played at the start of the year. In my opinion, that was the most pressure as I've ever felt, and there was maybe 15, 20 people. But this is a chance to pit ourselves against the best. If we can pick up wins and put big teams under the pump, then great.

Q. Bearing in mind that good cricket you played and that England is in many quarters considered one of the tournament favourites, does today's result increase that confidence that you can go toe to toe with teams like anyone, Australia?

ANDREW BALBIRNIE: Yeah. Again, it will be the first time I think Ireland's ever -- no, they played them a few years ago at the World Cup, but the first time I play Australia in T20 international. They play England here on Friday night, which will be a great game.

If we can win on Friday, we'll take some momentum up to Brisbane with us, and who knows? That's the kind of attitude we've had over the last few days is who knows what can happen? The group is wide open. We're a part of that, which is great. That means a lot to us.

We just have to make sure -- we were disappointed how we turned up on Sunday against Sri Lanka after Friday. It was such a high on Friday, then to play on Sunday, I'm not sure we kind of put our best performance in, which is disappointing. It's a key message. One we said straight away after the game to make sure we back this performance up, we can't rest after beating England. We have to beat Afghanistan, beat Australia, beat New Zealand.

We have to try our best. If we come up short, so be it, but we have to give it a crack.

Q. Andrew, congratulations. When your team got full member status, there were some opportunities that were closed to some of your players to play professional cricket in England. There were some sacrifices made. Can you speak about in that context what this win means and what it means for Irish cricket moving forward, and the things that some of your players have done to get to this point.

ANDREW BALBIRNIE: When it happened, it was great because you got test cricket, and you could be a test cricketer. We haven't played a lot of test cricket, which I often spoke about publicly it's been disappointing. We've got tests next year.

I did genuinely believe that not playing county cricket would tarnish the way that our youngsters progressed. I think my opinion's changed a bit the way that I've seen our youngsters play. It's always been a bit of a sink or swim situation for a lot of our young guys. You have to see how they go at the highest level, and you have the names I mentioned earlier have stood out and been key members of this squad.

That's the hand we were dealt. We got the test status, and we have to produce our own cricketers, and we're starting to do that. The knock-on effect is wins like tonight will hopefully trigger a bit of an interest back home. Well, I hope so. If it doesn't, then I give up.

Certainly we want to see those kids playing the game. It's a great game, and it's given me a lot of pleasure. Hopefully nights like tonight can ignite a future generation of Irish cricketers.

Q. I was just wondering, you were a couple of overs behind the over rate at one point. Jos Butler just now implied there might be a little bit of gamesmanship. Was that just game management?

ANDREW BALBIRNIE: No, it wasn't. Our lads are just really slow around the pitch. It was a huge ground. There was a bit of noise. You can tell, my voice isn't great.

It actually wasn't gamesmanship. If it was, I would have slowed it down even more, and we maybe would have been five or six overs down. Certainly I was trying my best to get out through the overs quick because I didn't want to rely on the weather.

I've seen enough games of cricket to know we can't rely on the weather. It came in when it did, and it's in the history books that it worked out really well for us.

Q. You spoke before about what this night will mean to you moving forward. You play here again on Friday. It will be your second official game here. We don't know when you'll get the chance to come in and play here again. What opportunities would you like to see more for Irish cricket becoming that full member nation and being able to play some of the bigger nations around the world in the biggest stadiums?

ANDREW BALBIRNIE: How long have you got? My highlight for Ireland, if you ask me when I retire, was our first morning at Lord's. I've never experienced a buzz like it. The prematch. Test cricket is my favourite format. It's what I grew up watching. It's what I want to play. It's what I want this group of cricketers to play because it's such a thrill. It tests every attribute of your game on and off the pitch.

It's out of my control. We have tests lined up next year, one at Lord's, which will be amazing. We played in this super league in 50-over cricket, which has been great for us. We've had some great results in that. We've had some average results.

But for this group to get better, they have to play at this level as often as possible. You want to play all the big nations home and away. That super league has given it to us, but I certainly think there's more opportunities particularly in the red ball game.

But all we can do as players is go out and do what we did tonight as often as possible, and then we leave it up to the powers that be.

Q. Just a quick one, you have had tours from India and New Zealand earlier this year. There were a few heartbreaking losses in those series but lots of learnings. How were those experiences playing against those countries?

ANDREW BALBIRNIE: Yeah, certainly playing against India in Dublin was an amazing event for all of us. You lose those close games and you take away your learnings, and you can talk about learnings, and you're never really sure when you're going to reap it again and gain from those learnings?

I think tonight we got the rub of the green that maybe we missed during the summer. I think the beauty of the summer's cricket, for the majority of it, we played good cricket. We lost games, but our message was always the same. Go out and play that type of cricket because, if we're going to beat these teams, we have to try to play that way.

I've said it before, it won't always come off. We might be made to look like idiots, but more often than not, we'll get the benefits of it in the long run.

Q. My question is quite a bit apart from the match and all this thing, the cricket philosophy. Even after you spent 12 years in international cricket and Ireland is a full-time member since 2006, don't you find it demeaning when a journal happens to report it as the upset, Ireland upset England? Don't you find it demeaning, like the team played well, did well, but still they are quoting it as an upset.

ANDREW BALBIRNIE: That's not my -- I can't control what people say. People have an opinion about cricket. I have an opinion about rugby and football. That's just the way the world works. If people want to say it's an upset, naturally I don't know where England are ranked, I don't know where we're ranked, but there's certainly a lot of teams between us, so it would be seen as an upset.

We're in the change room after that thinking we've not played our best cricket but still won, so that must mean we're in a pretty good spot. Certainly I was criticising Liverpool over the weekend. People are going to criticise me for this whole tournament. That's just the way the world works.

Q. You had an outstanding team 11 years back in 2011 when Kevin O'Brien played brilliant innings, so I don't think there's anything like an upset win if you win two times. What's your take on this?

ANDREW BALBIRNIE: Thank you very much.