T20 tournament for the Irish
FORMER West Indies all-rounder and coach of the Ireland cricket team Phil Simmons is predicting that his side will do well in the third staging of the International Cricket Council (ICC) Twenty20 World cup which bowls off this Friday at the Guyana National Stadium, Providence. The Irish team which touched down yesterday held its first media briefing at the Pegasus Hotel where Simmons and team Captain William Porterfield spoke immensely about their chances in this year’s tournament.

Simmons, 47, succeeded Adrian Birrell as coach of the Ireland national cricket team after the 2007 ICC Cricket World Cup and has been enjoying  a fruitful career so far, leading the Irish men to the 2010 T20 World Cup but yesterday he noted that the tournament is about the team and not him playing against the West Indies.

The Trinidadian Simmons who retired from the sport in 2002 and later went into coaching, made it clear that his desire of winning is even greater now as a coach than when he was a player and the only difference now is that he’s wearing different colours and a win for his Irish team over the maroons would be considered fabulous.

“The only difference is that I’m playing with a different team but my intentions are the same, I just want to make sure that my team goes out there and try to win as much as possible we do the right things to win the game and it was the same way how I think when I use to play and it’s the same way now that I’m coaching and its different colours I’m wearing now” Simmons said.

He further stated that “Victory is always sweet, it doesn’t matter who you win against. People keep talking about me and the West Indies but it’s the whole Irish team that’s here, so it’s a case where winning is important and it’s more important to us than the rest of the big teams so, we have to make sure that we try and win”.

The confidence level of the squad is relatively high and he went on to further mention that they are “always confident, it’s a case where we come here to go out in the field and do our best and one day our best will be good enough and one day it might not, but we always try to put our best foot forward when we go out there”.

Unlike many of the other teams, Ireland has had a long stay in the Caribbean prior to the start of the T20 World Cup, where they participated in the Jamaica Cricket Festival, playing against Jamaica and the West Indies before flying to Trinidad and Tobago where they had two T20 Matches against the home side.

The team’s long standing Captain Porterfield said that “over the last three weeks, we’ve came on big time, we started off pretty slow especially with the bat during the Jamaica Cricket Festival but I think coming near the end, we started showing what we can do.
Over the last week we’ve been looking to improve on our game, so I think that’s an area we have improved on a lot. In terms of bowling we’ve been doing well and also it’s been good in the field so, yea, we’re ready”.

Porterfield said that his side is looking forward to their two warm up matches on April 27 and 28, New Zealand and Afghanistan.