This series, the first in charge for new head coach Gary Wilson, ostensibly marked the start of Ireland’s preparations for February’s World Cup qualifiers.<\/p>\n
Their first fixtures in the format since May 2025 were always likely to display some 50-over rust but to have already lost the series without coming within a sniff of a victory will hardly raise hopes of making next year’s tournament for the first time since 2015.<\/p>\n
While Saturday’s conclusion of the home summer still offers an opportunity to salvage something from the series, at present Wilson is left looking at more measured positives.<\/p>\n
In taking the two most stubborn of Afghanistan wickets on Wednesday, Hoey continued to stake his claim to serve Ireland as a wicket-taking spinner in the middle overs. Added to four wickets and 36 runs on Monday, the 24-year-old is one who has pressed his case through the series.<\/p>\n
Balbirnie’s century – his 10th in ODI cricket which leaves him behind only Paul Stirling and William Porterfield in Irish colours – has of course been the best knock of the series for the hosts so far. <\/p>\n
For a player not in Ireland’s T20 side, it was a timely reminder of his importance at the top of the order as captain Paul Stirling continues to search for a score.<\/p>\n
All-rounder Curtis Campher was in the same category coming in to Wednesday but provided the desired x-factor in the middle order as he accelerated to 84 before targeting one boundary too many.<\/p>\n
Still, after June’s T20 2-0 victory over world champions India, this series has already brought Irish cricket back down to earth with something of a bump. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This series, the first in charge for new head coach Gary Wilson, ostensibly marked the start of Ireland’s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":736004,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[1721,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-736003","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\/736003","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=736003"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/736003\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/736004"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=736003"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=736003"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=736003"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}