Andrew Balbirnie: ‘It’s surreal to beat the best T20 team in the world’

For a ground that is so far away from home, the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) has a strange relationship with Irish sporting history.

Sandymount’s Ron Delany won a gold medal here at the 1956 Olympics. In more recent news, Laois’ own Zac Tuohy was part of a Geelong Cats outfit that won the AFL Grand Final in Melbourne only last month.

Now, the sport for which the ground is actually named has written an indelible Irish chapter into the history of the MCG thanks to a five-run win over England at the T20 World Cup.

“It’ll always be a special place because of tonight,” acknowledged Ireland captain Andrew Balbirnie, named player of the match for his innings of 62 off 47 balls.

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For the second time in the space of a week, the skipper was asked where a scalp at a major tournament ranks in the ever-growing list of major Irish tournament wins. After none since 2015, all of a sudden Ireland have two in five days after this win and Friday’s result over the West Indies.

“In T20 cricket, it’s the best,” said Balbirnie. “I’ve played in this team for a number of years and we’ve never had a result like this.

“We’ve been hit and miss, that culminated in the knockout phase last year [when Ireland were knocked out of the 2021 World Cup by Namibia]. We needed to readdress what we were doing and we needed everyone to buy into how we wanted to play.

“To beat, in my opinion, the best T20 team in the world, I looked it through it this morning at the matchups and part of me was struggling to understand if they show up how we could beat them.”

“It’s surreal, an absolutely surreal feeling.”

The nature of the win was bizarre and somewhat anticlimactic in that Ireland were off the field when the decision to call the game off in their favour came through. With five-and-a-half-overs to go, England were five runs behind where they needed to be on according to Duckworth-Lewis (DLS), a complicated calculation that works out at any given point which side should win the game should rain curtail things.

England could see the rain was coming and went on the charge in order to tilt the calculation in their favour. Facing leg-spinner Gareth Delany, Moeen Ali looked to cash in on a matchup that favoured him.

The 12 runs he scored off just three balls tilted the momentum England’s way. In all likelihood, given the way Ali was going, England could well have got on the right side of DLS if just two more balls were bowled.

Fortunately for Ireland, they weren’t and the heavens opened at the perfect time.

“The way Moeen was playing, I’d have been worried if they got another ball in,” admitted Balbirnie.

“I said that to someone in the changing room there, I’ve seen a lot of rain in my time playing cricket and I’ve never been happier to see rain come down when it did.

“[If the game continued] Who knows what would have happened? They had so much batting left. The rain came at a good time for us but we’re on the board in this group and it’s an amazing feeling.”

As for England, they now have their backs against the wall with games against Australia, New Zealand and Sri Lanka to come. Any more defeats and their tournament is likely over.

That situation creates one level of disappointment, but the fact defeat came against an unfancied side like Ireland creates a whole other level of hurt.

“The expectation was on us to win the game today,” admitted England captain Jos Buttler. “We should be expecting to beat an Ireland team, we were expecting a tough challenge but we should be expected to win that game. Of course that adds extra disappointment.

“Whether you say we’re favourites or not going into an Australia game is a different conversation. But [defeat against Ireland] adds extra hurt.”