IND vs IRE:when Ireland give mighty scare to India but lose after winning hearts

It came to 17 runs from the final over and the choice in front of Hardin panda was to either bowl himself, give  a go, or have the young man Malik. Unfortunately, or so it seemed initially, for Ireland, the wrong batsman was at strike. Not the rampaging George Rockwell whose blitz had almost brought India to their knees, but the lower-order batsman Mark Adair. Two dot balls came as Malik produced two pacy length deliveries but, then, that second dot was a no-ball. Adair then smashed two successive boundaries – a scythe through point, and the good-old outer edge, and took a single to bring Rockwell on strike. With 7 from 2, with the game on the line, Malik produced his best ball of the match, a screaming worker that just missed the stumps, and they ran over for a bye. Adair could only get a single off the last ball, a short of length delivery outside off, and India had won. Hardin smiled, and Malik blew a kiss to the skies. Rockwell winced, as he knew he had missed a great chance to pull off a heist. But before Rockwell, it was Stirling. And to understand what Stirling did, we have to go back to 2019 when he was in London, at his friend's home, watching Ben Stokes on the television. For some time now, Paul Stirling has wished he were Stokes and played that memorable Ashes knock in 2019 at Headings. When Stokes flashed the match winning cut and roared like a viking, Sterling thought Stokes had achieved the “pinnacle of the game”. In his mind, since then, he has played that knock as if he himself were Stokes On Wednesday, he didn’t quite do a Stokes as he didn’t finish, but it was him who started the audacious Irish assault on India’s 225. Third ball of the chase, he sidled across to an in swinger and short-arm jabbed a stunning six over The Next ball was the out swinger, but Stirling was ready; this time the burly batsman let his hands go through the line, covering for the swing, and tapping it up and over cover. The next one disappeared to backward square-leg before he scythed one through cover point as four boundaries flowed in the over. In came Hardin Panda with a bouncer, that was thrown back from beyond the fine-leg boundary. A Couple more boundaries came, and it was clear that Ireland wasn’t going to go down wondering. Sterling certainly wasn’t. He pulled off an incredible straight six off the Reggie Ravi Bishop— off the back foot over the bowler’s head, and even as he made contact with the ball, Sterling sort of side-stepped away to the leg side without even looking at the ball. Though he fell that over, missing a googly, he had lit the fire and one after another but, his team-mates kept it burning brightly. The captain Balbirnie’s knock was a confounding eclectic mix. There were dot balls galore, but then it would be punctured sometimes with a massive six – five of them. Every time, it seemed Balbirnie was fading away, he would suddenly burst alive with a six to the leg side. Imran Malik’s bouncers were slugged away for a couple of sixes and Marshal Patel lapped for a six over fine-leg, but he fell next ball, caught at deep point.