da bet sport： Ever since Boyd Rankin was lured to England as part of cricket’s uneven class system, Ireland have lacked that extra gear of speed
da realsbet： Daniel Brettig in Canberra02-Mar-2015Merv Hughes once remarked ruefully of the day Ian Botham tore him apart in Brisbane that “the faster I tried to bowl, the further he hit it”.Ever since Boyd Rankin was lured to England as part of cricket’s uneven class system, Ireland have lacked that extra gear of speed Hughes so vainly strove for, and their captain William Porterfield reasons that this may actually work in his side’s favour as they contemplate the freakish skill of AB de Villiers.Pace on its own has not troubled him so far, and it will take canny tactics, subtle variation and discipline to do so – qualities all conspicuously absent when de Villiers destroyed West Indies at the SCG. In John Mooney, Alex Cusack, Max Sorensen and the left-arm spinner George Dockrell, Porterfield has a collective that have long made up in cohesion and planning what they are missing in terms of pure speed. On that front, they are presently making a far better fist of mild resources than England, who have left Rankin to languish, seemingly unwanted.”Look, it’s not something you can just find or just have if you don’t have that,” Porterfield said of the pace lost with Rankin. “You’ve just got to be really smart with what you do have. Obviously you’ve got to find your length pretty early. It’s the same for any bowlers; if you bowl 90 miles an hour or 75, you’re going to go through similar processes in terms of how you’re going to bowl on different pitches, and we’re no different.”We’ve just got to be smart with how we set fields and how we go about things from there, really. I think before the tournament we said we’ve got to be really smart about how we go about our cricket, and I think we can utilise the fact that some of our bowlers don’t have the pace that some batters generally like to face, so that can be an advantage as much as a hindrance.”The bowlers have been drilling over a number of years, so they’ve got to use what they have. It’s the same with the bat. You’re not going to obviously come in and try to beat Chris Gayle from the off if you can’t hit the ball 95 metres which you’re going to have to clearly hit most of these boundaries. No, you’ve got to be smart and use what you have, and the tools that you have wisely throughout the tournament.”In the lower key matches of a World Cup, South Africa have a tendency to obliterate opponents ranked below them, and as Farhaan Behardien admitted, they are far more comfortable in the quieter environs of Canberra relative to the crazy hype that enveloped them around a heavy defeat to India at a packed MCG. Manuka Oval more closely resembles a South African venue, all clear air, hills in the background and a crowd of no more than 15,000.Something Ireland have shown repeatedly in eight fruitful years since their World Cup bow in 2007 is that they have composure, persistence and belief in rich quantities, something shared in common with most every Irish national team. Porterfield’s men needed only look back towards Twickenham and the rugby team on the weekend for an example of Irish pluck on the international stage, and the cricketers have provided plenty of their own.”I think if you get any Irish‑born team, they’ve got that belief and they’ve got it on the pitch and they’re going to scrap right to the last minute,” Porterfield said. “I don’t think we’re any different, and I think the skill factor has improved a lot in the last eight years, as well. But I think the mindset has always been that if we’re going out there 11 on 11 and we’re going out there to win, otherwise I don’t think you should be going out there to take part really.”I think our skill factor has improved a lot, and obviously we’ve played a lot more cricket over the last few years than we have done before 2011. We’ll draw on those things, but in terms of our mindset, each game we go out there, we go out there to prepare and we go out there to win, and tomorrow is no different.”It will be different in some ways. Ireland currently sit above South Africa in the Group B standings, and are widely expected to push on to the quarter-finals if not beyond. They have plenty of reason to believe in themselves, but it remains to be seen whether this confidence is allied to skills sturdy enough to withstand de Villiers and others. It should be noted that de Villiers was absent when Ireland made South Africa’s top order sweat at Eden Gardens in 2011 before JP Duminy and the bowlers put space between the teams.”It obviously will be a challenge,” Porterfield said of de Villiers. “You can sit all day and talk about him and different theories and plans and whatever, but as I said, you’ve got to stick it on with your best ball and how you go about things. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel or change how you play really against one player. He obviously has a special talent, but you’ve been doing something yourself. Each bowler has got their own skills. They’ve done it over a number of years.”They’ve got to back themselves and back the field that’s been set and how well they want to get hit, and if he hits that over their heads or down their throats, then so be it. You’ve got to be in control of what you are in control of and that is letting the ball go. Look, if he plays the way he plays, then so be it. But we’ll have everyone individual plans for each of them, and hopefully we’ll see the back of them early.”If Ireland don’t, they may well end up feeling a little like Jason Holder last week, or Hughes all those years ago.
