Ireland skipper Trent Johnston insisted his side could take pride from their performance, despite a heavy defeat by New Zealand following a late collapse.
Ireland's last six wickets fell for just nine runs as the Kiwis wrapped up a 129-run win, but Johnston said: "New Zealand are a special outfit.
"They are one of the favourites to win this thing and there is no shame in losing to them, albeit heavily.
"We can look at the positives - and our bowling and fielding were top again."
And he admitted a late rally from the Kiwis - with Brendon McCullum and James Franklin striking 71 runs off 7.1 overs - cost his side dear.
"That was probably what took the game away from us to be honest," he said.
"But until that we had bowled well and kept them pretty quiet. Kyle McCallan and Andrew White were great again and we were restricting them at one point. 
"And, like I say, our performance in the field is always good and we pride ourselves on it.
"So we'll take the positives out of this and try to learn from what went wrong."
Coach Adrian Birrell hopes Ireland can take inspiration from Bangladesh's resurgence as they look to rebound from defeat by New Zealand this week.
Ireland, who face champions Australia on Friday, watched the Tigers rebound well from two heavy Super 8 defeats.
"Bangladesh had a couple of bad games then beat South Africa and we're taking motivation from that," said Birrell.
"We have three opportunities left in the Super 8 and if conditions go our way we will put up a good showing."
No comments:
Post a Comment