After three losses, Canada played Ireland, arguably the strongest team in Associates cricket. Canada struggled from the start and managed just 154 for the loss of 9 wickets. Nitish Kumar top-scored with 38. Canada fought hard in the field to defend their meagre total, with Desai taking three wickets but Ireland ran out easy winners by 5 wickets.
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\nCanada won the toss and chose to bat, with Nitish Kumar playing his first game of the tournament replacing Sunil Dhaniram. As has been the pattern in the tournament, they got off to a poor start with Patel bowled by O’Brien by the second ball of the match. Cheema hit a solitary boundary, and then departed, bowled by Johnson, a good ball beating a half-hearted defensive push – 6\/2. Cheema’s high score in four innings was been 5. Barnett and Kumar steadied the ship with some cautious batting and put on 64. Barnett (26 from 60 balls) was caught at long-off as he tried to accelerate, and Kumar (38 from 75 balls) was bowled two overs later. Bagai made a steady 21 before being caught at point, and Hansra made just 3. Surkari reach 20 and then was bowled trying to sweep, and Hooper and Bhatti followed rapidly, leaving number 10 and 11 to bat out the overs. They managed to take Canada past 150, and Ireland have to chase a modest 155 to win. The Irish spinners bowled well, taking 5 wickets and bowling 25 overs for just 67 runs. <\/p>\n
Ireland made a slow start but then Stirling took a fancy to Hooper’s bowling, hitting him for six boundaries, three of them in one over. Hooper was withdrawn from the attack after conceding 31 runs from four overs. The half-century opening partnership was posted after 10 overs. Baidwan was bowling well however and got his reward when Balburnie was caught at cover, and next over Desai had Poynter lbw for a duck. A nicely flighted delivery from Desai accounted for the dangerous Stirling (35), and Canada were back in the hunt. Desai at one point had bowled 6 overs for 12 runs, but then O’Brien broke the shackles, hitting him hard for three boundaries in his 7th over. Just when the tide seemed to have turned Ireland’s way, Two more wickets fell, McCann, then White adjudged lbw in three balls. Ireland were 98 for 5 after 24 overs. That was as close as Canada got however, as Mooney and O’Brien knocked off the 63 runs required with little trouble. <\/p>\n
Cricket Europe coverage<\/a> – CricInfo scorecard<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" After three losses, Canada played Ireland, arguably the strongest team in Associates cricket. Canada struggled from the start and managed just 154 for the loss of 9 wickets. Nitish Kumar top-scored with 38. Canada fought hard in the field to defend their meagre total, with Desai taking three wickets but Ireland ran out easy winners […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/372"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=372"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/372\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":374,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/372\/revisions\/374"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}