(Web Desk) - Canada stunned Ireland in their biggest result in history, pulling of a famous victory at the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup 2024 in New York.
Canada held their nerve with the ball as the Group fixture came down to the final over at the Nassau County International Cricket Stadium, beating Ireland by 12 runs to record their first ever ICC T20 World Cup win.
The Canada men’s cricket team only had one previous win over a full member nation to their name (against Ireland in 2019), but were the better team in all three disciplines as they produced another shock result in a group that has thrown up plenty of drama already at this tournament.
Coming a day after their southerly neighbours USA had stunned Pakistan, Canada lent on the brilliance of Nicholas Kirton with the bat to reach 137/7 in their 20 overs – the highest score on this ground in three tournament matches.
And the bowling unit stood up to deny Ireland, taking seven wickets and surviving a late onslaught to take the win.
Earlier, Ireland won the toss at the venue in Long Island, with captain Paul Stirling opting to bowl first.
And it was Craig Young, coming into the side as an additional seam option, who took two wickets as Ireland kept Canada pegged back through the first half of the innings.
Young and Mark Adair kept things extremely tidy, with Gareth Delany also picking up a wicket with a superb caught-and-bowled to reduce Canada to 53/4.
But Canada were able to find the boundary with regularity, threatening the highest score on a ground where runs have been at a premium.
Nicholas Kirton’s excellent 49 from 35 balls and Shreyas Movva’s 37 from 36 boosted Canada to a competitive total.
Squads
Canada: 1 Aaron Johnson, 2 Navneet Dhaliwal, 3 Pargat Singh, 4 Nicholas Kirton, 5 Shreyas Movva (wk), 6 Dilpreet Bajwa, 7 Saad Bin Zafar (capt), 8 Junaid Siddiqui, 9 Dilon Heyliger, 10 Kaleem Sana, 11 Jeremy Gordon
Ireland: 1 Paul Stirling, 2 Andy Balbirnie, 3 Lorcan Tucker, 4 Harry Tector, 5 Curtis Campher, 6 George Dockrell, 7 Gareth Delany, 8 Mark Adair, 9 Barry McCarthy, 10 Josh Little, 11 Craig Young