Ireland Captain Balbirnie expects an ‘amazing’ atmosphere for the T20I matches against India
Ahead of the T20I series against India starting 26th June, Ireland captain Andrew Balbirnie acknowledged India’s depth, which will help their team to play in different formats opposite different sides. Balbirnie likewise added how great a platform IPL has set for the young Indian players to prepare for the international cricket.
In a press conference held on 24th June, Balbirnie said, “Nowadays, any Indian team you play is going to be a good team. It kind of shows the depth of Indian cricket that they can put out two teams. We couldn’t do that – there’s no way we could put out a Test team and a T20 team at the same time, we just don’t have the numbers for that, “.
He added, “With the IPL being so successful over a number of years, a lot of young guys are coming in and putting their names forward to get into that first eleven for India. And with the World Cup in October, there’ll be a lot of guys looking for those places. So we know it’s going to be a good Indian team and we have to be at our best to try to force a result,”.
“The good thing about the IPL is that you get to see all these players pretty much every day, there’s a game every day when the IPL is on. So we have a lot of footage of these guys – bowlers and batters. So there’s plenty of homework being done, Scott Irvine, our performance analyst, has done a lot of work. So we have the tools there. It’s all well and good having the footage and stuff, (but) we got to go outside and execute our skills. Certainly the homework will be done before we go out there on Sunday.”
“One of the main messages we always try to get, particularly to our bowlers, is to just take them in and just kind of catch your breath back because it can happen so quickly and the ball can be flying all over the place, and sometimes you can rush into things. So we have to make sure that we kind of take that moment to gather ourselves in the important moments. But hopefully we’ve had a lot of experience playing top teams in 50-over cricket and T20 cricket,”.
“I think the intensity goes up, naturally the noise is incredible. You almost can’t hear yourself. I think there’s 10 or 11 thousand people going to be here on Sunday and potentially 9000 of them will be Indian supporters. It’s great, it’s what you want to do growing up, to see this crowd. A few of our guys played in the 2011 World Cup against India, so it was one of the most amazing atmospheres to have played in. So the guys are really excited to see the colour, hear the noise of the game, and hopefully that kind of gives our guys extra confidence once we get down to it on Sunday.”
