Home
Cricket News
Gary Wilson William Porterfield Added To Irelands Coaching Staff For World T20 2021

Gary Wilson, William Porterfield added to Ireland's coaching staff for World T20 2021

Ireland have added Gary Wilson and William Porterfield as members of the coaching staff for the upcoming World T20 2021 scheduled to take place in the UAE and Oman in October-November. The announcement was made in a statement from Cricket Ireland.

“North West Warriors head coach Gary Wilson has joined the squad, while Wilson’s Warriors assistant coach and current international William Porterfield will join the squad today,” the statement read.

“Ryan Eagleson, announced recently as the bowling coach for the T20 World Cup, has also today flown out to Dubai after successfully coaching the Ireland Under-19s Men’s side to world cup qualification on Sunday in Almeria, Spain,” it further added.

All the members of the coaching staff will have to undergo a six-day mandatory hotel quarantine upon arrival in Dubai before the side’s preparation camp which is slated to start on October 1.

Ireland will first play a warm-up match against Scotland on October 5, 2021 which will be followed by three T20Is against UAE on October 7, 8 and 10 respectively.

The team’s World T20 warm-up matches will be played on October 12 against PNG and on October 14 against Bangladesh in Abu Dhabi. The Irish side will then face Netherlands in the first match of the World T20 round 1 on October 18 which will be followed by the encounter against Sri Lanka on October 20 in Abu Dhabi.

The team will then fly to Sharjah to play Namibia on October 22.

Recently, an 18-man preliminary squad was announced which will eventually be reduced to 15 for the tournament. The other three players will travel as reserves.

SQUAD: Andrew Balbirnie (c), Mark Adair, Curtis Campher, Gareth Delany, George Dockrell, Shane Getkate, Graham Kennedy, Josh Little, Andrew McBrine, Barry McCarthy, Kevin O’Brien, Neil Rock, Simi Singh, Paul Stirling, Harry Tector, Lorcan Tucker, Ben White, Craig Young.

Discover more

Jhulan Goswami, Beth Mooney earn big promotions in latest ICC Women ODI Rankings

India Women bowler Jhulan Goswami's outstanding performance in the final match against Australia has propelled her to the second position on the ICC Women's ODI Player Rankings. She had scalped three vital wickets in the final ODI to help India salvage pride in the three-match long ODI series and ending Australia's 26-match winning streak. She is second to only Australia Women’s left-arm spinner Jess Jonassen. After her performance in the series against Australia Women, she has gone past South Africa’s Marizanne Kapp and Megan Schutt of Australia as per the latest update of the ICC Rankings. Meanwhile, India Women skipper Mithali Raj has slipped to the third position on the rankings for batters after a non so successful series with the bat. From the Australian Women side, the opener Beth Mooney surged to the eighth position on the rankings on the back of two brilliant knocks of 125 not out and 52 in two of the three games against India Women.

Pakistan cricketers laud pitches prepared for National T20 tournament

Pakistan’s domestic T20 tournament is on and some prominent players, Ahmed Shahzad, Kamran Akmal, Sohail Tanveer and Imam-ul-Haq talked about the facilities, pitches and accommodations in a video released by the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) on the official Twitter handle. “The travelling, accommodations, meals of the players, their central contracts, everything has seen am appreciation,” Shahzad said. “We are also seeing a crowd in the ground after a long time,” the right-handed batsman added. Imam also talked about the accommodation and travelling and praised the facilities that are being provided to the players. “Looking at the travelling and accommodations, it doesn’t feel as if we are playing a domestic tournament but it looks as if we are travelling with the Pakistan team itself,”the left-handed batter said. The wicket-keeper batsman Kamran Akmal lauded the way the broadcasting of the tournament is being done and further added that it gives the young players an opportunity to gain confidence. “The way the tournament is being broadcast, it’s a good experience for the youngsters and getting this exposure at a young age is good for the players,” Akmal said. Talking about the pitches, Shahzad said that the Pakistan and New Zealand teams had to lock horns with each other on this venue and these would have been the perfect tracks to play the game. “The series between Pakistan and New Zealand had to be played at this venue and I think these would have been the perfect pitches for international fixtures,” Shahzad said. The Pakistan and New Zealand bilateral tie was abandoned by the Kiwis minutes before the start of the first ODI citing security issues.

Why would I blow my comeback? Sreesanth finally breaks silence on fixing saga

Indian pacer S Sreesanth, who was first accused of spot-fixing and subsequently banned by the Board of Control for Cricket in India from taking part in any form of cricket, has clarified the allegations, saying that he never agreed to spot-fixing, despite being asked to perform in a certain manner. “I was supposed to give 14 plus runs in one over and I gave five runs in four balls, no no-balls, no wide, not single slower ball in an IPL game. I bowled at 135 plus, that too after having 12 surgeries on the toe,” he said in a video uploaded by Sportskeeda on their Youtube Channel. Reasoning why he wouldn’t even have dared to go for something like spot-fixing, the 38-year-old said, “I was trying to make a comeback to the national squad and I was only looking to play against South Africa in September. A person focussing on that, why would I do it for just 10 lakhs?” “At that time, I used to have party bills bigger than the two lakhs which I used to play with my cards. If I had that much cash, why would I not use it?” asked the Kerala ban who was banned for a lifetime by BCCI after the 2013 fixing incident in which he along with Ajit Chandila and Ankeet Chavan were framed. Sreesanth thanked the judiciary which eventually reduced the ban to seven years and also cleared him off of all charges. “I will not take any names but other people were also involved in it. But the experience that I, my friends and my family circle had was near death,” he said remembering the harrowing time. Sreesanth eventually made comeback and played in the Syed Mushtaq Ali and Vijay Hazare Trophy matches for Kerala in 2020. He even put his name in the IPL auction hat to have a kind of poetic justice to end his career exactly where it was forcefully ended in 2013, but couldn’t find a buyer. “I don’t have regrets. All I can say is that it is because of the night lief that I had and also the friend circle which used me without my knowledge is what hurt the most,” he said.

Ashes | Australia Sports Minister raises 'serious questions' on Perth Test

Australia’s sports minister has raised “serious questions” about the fate of the scheduled Perth Test of the Ashes series amid the growing uncertainty over the fate of the entire scheduled to start in the first week of December. England players have expressed extreme reluctance to travel to Australia under strict Covid-19 restrictions and the minister also said that if the Test match could not be done without players going through a “prolonged” quarantine, the Test match will not take place at all. "We've had to do a lot of work to organise quarantine arrangements for cricketers coming into Australia. There's serious questions about whether there'll be a test match in Perth this summer. If there's no chance of coming here without prolonged quarantine, it just won’t occur,” Sports Minister, Richard Colbeck said to Perth radio station 6PR. The Ashes series is scheduled to start on December 08 with a traditional Test at the Gabba followed by three Test matches in Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney. There were earlier reports about the Perth Test as well and it was widely speculated that the Ashes series will end with two Test matches in Sydney instead of final Test at the newly-built Optus Stadium in Perth.