Italy secured their first win over a full ICC member as they inflicted a four-wicket defeat on Ireland in the third of the T20 World Cup warm-up matches between the sides in Dubai on Monday.<\/p>\n
Ireland had already tied up the three-match series 2-0 after winning the first two games the sides contested on Friday and Sunday.<\/p>\n
Opener Paul Stirling laid the foundations for Ireland’s total of 154 all out off 19.4 overs with a contribution of 45 which included three sixes and two fours. <\/p>\n
He was ably assisted by middle order contributions of 25 and 22 from Mark Adair and Ben Calitz respectively.<\/p>\n
Ireland’s final four wickets fell for just 16 runs in the space of two overs as their innings ended with two balls still to be bowled.<\/p>\n
Crishan Kalugamage was the pick of the Italy bowlers with 3-28, while Grant Stewart and JJ Smuts took two wickets apiece.<\/p>\n
Italy’s response was a stuttering one, Wayne Madsen contributing best of the top order batters with 39, before his dismissal left his side on 108-5. <\/p>\n
Gian-Piero Meade followed soon after with the score on 111, leaving his side requiring 44 from 23 balls to win.<\/p>\n
A seventh-wicket partnership of 46 between Stewart (33 off 19 balls) and Marcus Campopiano (8) however was enough to see the Italians over the line with three deliveries to spare.<\/p>\n
Matthew Humphreys and Mark Adair ended with identical bowling returns of 2-23 from four overs each.<\/p>\n
The series in the United Arab Emirates formed part of both teams’ preparations for the T20 World Cup in February.<\/p>\n
Ireland will face co-hosts Sri Lanka in their World Cup opener on 8 February and will also meet Australia, Oman and Zimbabwe in Group B.<\/p>\n
First-time qualifiers Italy will open their campaign against Scotland on 9 February, with England, West Indies and Nepal the other teams in Group C.<\/p>\n
Before the start of the tournament, Ireland remain in Dubai for a two-match series against the UAE, the first match taking place on Thursday and the second on Saturday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Italy secured their first win over a full ICC member as they inflicted a four-wicket defeat on Ireland…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":392137,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[1721,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-392136","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-cricket","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/392136","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=392136"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/392136\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/392137"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=392136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=392136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=392136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}