Ireland vs England Prediction: England has all the tools to win here

The T20 World Cup keeps giving us great battles and many of these matches have been unpredictable. We are being blessed with a great tournament and this seems to have taken up a notch than the last World Cup we witnessed in UAE. The Super 12s are in full swing now but the rain has had a say in the game between South Africa and Zimbabwe. In this particular game of the Super 12s, England is going to take on Ireland.

England comes into the game after a low-scoring win against Afghanistan, winning by five wickets. In that game, their pace attack took control and limited Afghanistan to just 112. Sam Curran took five wickets for just 10 runs. Apart from Curran, Wood and Stokes shared two wickets each while Woakes had the remaining wicket. During their batting, the English effort wasn’t fluid but because the target was slow, they could afford to take their time and settle in.

They were stifled by the spin trio of Mujeeb, Rashid, and Nabi, who took three wickets and allowed just 55 runs in 11 overs. The England batting clicked against the fast bowlers as expected and took cruise control against Azmatullah Farooqui and Fareed Ahmad Malik. It is clear that the track wasn’t well suited for batting. England loves the pace on the ball and having two power hitters up-front Alex Hales and Jos Buttler helps the cause. Dawid Malan does a good holding job whereas Ben Stokes, Liam Livingstone, Harry Brook, and Moeen Ali can be adequate finishers.

In terms of bowling, the team’s pace attack is one of the best in the tournament, and with the evolution of Sam Curran, who has become much more penetrative in the short format, they now have a seamer who can complement the loaded fast bowling attack of Mark Wood, Chris Woakes, and Ben Stokes. The fast bowling attack has accuracy, pace, and swing, and also can generate height on balls. It is a complete bowling attack, to be honest in terms of pace but the spinners tend to give away too many runs at times.

The Irish effort wasn’t as impressive in their previous game as they lost by nine wickets and with five overs to spare. After doing a more-than-decent job of making it to the Qualifiers, they lost to Sri Lanka in a rather one-sided fashion. In their last match, they couldn’t keep going and lost wickets at regular intervals. No partnership reached even the 30 runs mark and they could only gather 128 runs for eight wickets. While Stirling made 35 as an opener while Harry Tector had 45 and except for that no batter could exceed the 14 runs mark.

In terms of bowling, Irish men stood no chance. Sri Lankans set a solid platform by accumulating 63 runs in eight overs and change while Charith Asalanka and Kusalm Mendis did the job in a comfortable manner with a 60 runs partnership to put an exclamation point to their effort. Josh Little was ineffective and ended up giving 45 runs in four overs whereas the only impressive effort came from Gareth Delany who gave up just 28 runs in four overs and had the only wicket.

This wasn’t a good start to the Super 12s at all where the field is much more advanced than the Qualifying round. Ireland has shown promise but their play has been underwhelming in terms of putting up big totals and then their inability to defend it makes it worse. One positive has been that different players such as Campher, Tector, and Delany have stepped up in different games. The negative has been that the team performances have been missing and the team is too dependent upon a “hero”.

• Batters: England Josh Buttler: 18 runs(1 game), Alex Hales: 19 runs(1 game), Dawid Malan: 18 runs(1 game);
• Batters: Ireland: Paul Stirling: 106 runs( 4 games, Average: 36), Curtis Campher: 101 runs(4 games, Average: 50.50), George Dockrell: 77 runs(4 games, Average: 38.50);
• Bowlers: England: Sam Curran: 5 Wickets(1 Game), Mark Wood: 2 Wickets(1 Game), Ben Stokes: 2 Wickets(1 Game);
• Bowlers: Ireland: Gareth Delany: 4 Wickets( 4 Games, Econ: 7.15), Josh Little: 4 Wickets( 4 Games, Econ: 8.12), Mark Adair: 4 Wickets( 4 Games, Econ: 7.42).

There is no doubt that the English men will enter as the favorites here. But Ireland has had a history of upsetting big giants on the big stage. They pierced through the scene when they defeated England in the 2011 ICC 50 Over World Cup. England’s fast bowling attack will test the rather fragile Ireland batting order while their top order is more than enough to keep the Ireland speedsters at bay. Both teams haven’t gotten much from their spinners and depend upon pace a lot. In this game, I think England’s pace attack will click and they will get a BIG start when batting.