Irish skipper Porterfield rues missed chances

William Porterfield rued the missed chances, two catches off Shikhar Dhawan who went on to score an 85-ball-100, as Ireland crashed to an eight-wicket loss against India here on Tuesday.

“I think it was just a very good pitch in what is a small ground and defending an under par total and that makes it very difficult,” Porterfield said after the match.

“Once lads get a start, it's very hard to claw away. We had a couple chances there at the start, we probably should have taken that off Dhawan, and he was probably on 10 or 12 then and that makes a big difference. You take that and you nick another one off, and all of a sudden you're 20 for 2, and that puts them under pressure instead of getting away for 70 for none after 10 on a very good pitch,” he offered.

Ireland had a bright start after electing to bat first. They raised 60 runs in the first 10 overs but the dismissals of Paul Stirling and Ed Joyce slowed their innings down considerably. It didn’t help that they kept losing wickets after every decent partnership.

“We lost two quick wickets there, and we came out of the first ten, and we had 12 or 13 overs, I'm not sure when it was, we lost a couple quick wickets then, and that slowed us down slightly,” he pointed out. “But we managed to pick that up again coming down the back end in the 30th over, and we had a bit of a platform to go again. And every time we started to pick up a bit of momentum we managed to lose a wicket, which is slightly disappointing.

“But I like that our lads came in and played with freedom and intensity from the off, which I think you need to do. You have to have that confidence, and the confidence was there in the change room to back lads to go ahead and do that. We kept losing wickets which kept us back from kicking on to what would have been a competitive total,” he explained.