The spirit and fight shown on the fifth day was a good omen for the T20 internationals that begin later this week, and hopes are high of Ireland finally winning a game in Bangladesh, if not the three-match series.<\/p>\n
After more disappointments at the top of the order on Saturday, the Boys in Green began the final day needing another 333 to pull off the most improbable of wins and only four wickets with which to do it.<\/p>\n
A draw was equally unlikely as no team has ever saved a Test match by batting through the final day with so few men left, and when Andy McBrine went lbw for 21 early on, the home side would have expected to be showered and changed before lunch.<\/p>\n
But no. Jordan Neill impressed again with 30 from 46 balls \u2014 his fourth score of 30 of more in as many Test innings \u2014 and as ninth-wicket pair Campher and Gavin Hoey approached the tea interval looking impregnable there was just a glimmer of an heroic escape.<\/p>\n
When the end came, it came quickly, though.<\/p>\n
After surviving nearly 32 overs, Hoey was lbw for 37, and Matthew Humphreys was bowled next delivery leaving Campher high and dry on 71 not out from 259 balls \u2014 the longest innings by an Ireland player in Tests.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt the start of the day, the main word was \u2018fight\u2019, and the application shown by Gavin and Curtis was amazing, especially Curtis,\u201d skipper Andy Balbirnie said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt the same time we were outplayed by Bangladesh. The top order was the difference \u2014 theirs got big runs in both innings, our guys got starts but didn\u2019t go on.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Ireland total of 291 was the highest in a fourth innings at the Sher-E-Bangla Stadium and given their lack of cricket this year \u2014 and red-ball cricket generally \u2014 Balbirnie\u2019s team probably did as well as could be expected over the two matches.<\/p>\n
All-rounder Neill looks a real find, Humphreys starred in Sylhet, McBrine and Lorcan Tucker underlined their quality in the middle order and Campher doubled the marks on his tour card with that final innings of pure determination.<\/p>\n
If he hadn\u2019t run out of partners, he\u2019d probably still be batting now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The spirit and fight shown on the fifth day was a good omen for the T20 internationals that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":155434,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,898,43],"class_list":{"0":"post-155433","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-ie","9":"tag-ireland","10":"tag-latest-news-ticker","11":"tag-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155433","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=155433"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155433\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/155434"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=155433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=155433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=155433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}