Ireland’s skipper Paul Stirling is frustrated as his team was denied access to the pitch at Nassau County International Cricket Stadium in New York ahead of their match against India in the T20 World Cup 2024.
The stadium in New York is stranger to the Irish team but not to the Indian squad and Stirling expressed his frustration as Ireland want to analyse and see the pitch before selecting their playing XI for Wednesday’s encounter.
“We haven’t actually seen the ground and it doesn’t look like we’re going to before the game, so we’ve got to keep everyone waiting on the selection front until we’ve seen the pitch,” Stirling said as quoted by Irish media.
“We’re down to 12 or 13 but you can’t make those sort of calls until you get to the day and seeing what the conditions are in front of us.”
He then talked about facing India and said that the Blues would be a difficult challenge but they are confident in putting in a strong performance as it would be key ahead of their remaining matches.
“India are a really difficult challenge - they’ve got a number of top, top bowlers, they’ve just come off the back of the IPL and we know what they bring is the highest quality in cricket standards," Stirling added.
“No matter what happens, if we put in a strong performance we’ll go in with confidence into the next three games of the group.
"I certainly never thought I would play a cricket game in New York in my life - it’s something I’m looking forward to and I know the rest of the squad are as well," he added.
Squads
Ireland: Paul Stirling (c), Mark Adair, Ross Adair, Andrew Balbirnie, Curtis Campher, Gareth Delany, George Dockrell, Graham Hume, Josh Little, Barry McCarthy, Neil Rock, Harry Tector, Lorcan Tucker, Ben White and Craig Young
India: Rohit Sharma (c), Hardik Pandya (vc), Yashasvi Jaiswal, Virat Kohli, Suryakumar Yadav, Rishabh Pant (wk), Sanju Samson (wk), Shivam Dube, Ravindra Jadeja, Axar Patel, Kuldeep Yadav, Yuzvendra Chahal, Arshdeep Singh, Jasprit Bumrah and Mohammed Siraj.
Reserves: Shubman Gill, Rinku Singh, Khaleel Ahmed and Avesh Khan.
