It would be fitting if Ireland’s first win in the T20 World Cup came against the Scots given they denied the Irish a place in the tournament two years ago as they pulled off a shock victory to reach the tournament for the first time.<\/p>\n
Lewis said there was “major heartbreak” in the Ireland camp after that sore defeat that forced the squad to have to watch the World Cup from home.<\/p>\n
Ireland are in a better place now and come into the tournament off the back of a productive Tri-Nations series in Clontarf where they beat both Pakistan and the West Indies.<\/p>\n
“The series was a great success, we’ve got the results behind us. Confidence is high and that’s exactly what you want going into a World Cup,” Lewis added.<\/p>\n
Lloyd Tennant’s side are ranked ninth in the world but are in a tough Group B which also has hosts England, holders New Zealand, Sri Lanka and West Indies alongside the Scots.<\/p>\n
They will face all five sides with the top two in the group moving through to the semi-finals where they will face the top two from Group A.<\/p>\n
Scotland won by 39 runs the last time the two sides met in Nepal in January and Lewis believes getting off to a good start in their first game is “massive” for Ireland in terms of momentum.<\/p>\n
“There’s a big rivalry between us and them. They’ve probably got one up on us at the moment after beating us in Nepal. I think we’re looking good and we’re really excited for it.<\/p>\n
“They’ve got a new addition in Kirsty Gordon [a former England spinner] which is a boost for them.<\/p>\n
“If we get the win, then you never know against England.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It would be fitting if Ireland’s first win in the T20 World Cup came against the Scots given…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":634473,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[1721,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-634472","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\/634472","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=634472"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/634472\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/634473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=634472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=634472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=634472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}