Sublime Stirling Wreaks Havoc with Bat and Ball as Brilliant Ireland Brush Aside Hong Kong to Qualify for Bangladesh

Ireland's Mercurial opener Paul Stirling saved his glorious best for the most important game so far in the Twenty20 World Cup qualifying competition.

Stirling's brilliant 77 from 46 balls with 9 fours and 3 sixes was backed up with a spell of bowling which ranked as good, taking 4 wickets for 10 runs in his allotted 4 overs.

Stirling also had special praise for some tremendous catches, in particular from James Shannon, which helped slow down what looked like a menacing start by Hong Kong.

Barry Chambers: Paul, fantastic all round performance. I don't think there's going to be much doubt about the Man of the Match?

Paul Stirling: You never know these days, I see Gary Wilson didn't get one the other day. But, pleased on a personal level to do so well with the bat and ball. At the end of the day, today was all about qualifying for the World Cup, and we did that, we achieved it. And we will enjoy three or four days off until the semi-final.

Barry Chambers: And yourself, you dominated the opening partnership today. William has sort of taken centre stage, but you were back to your belligerent best, I think?

Paul Stirling: I was hitting it ok today, it's been a bit up and down throughout the last sort of week. But I think as long as we keep on, I suppose dovetailing would be the word, and keep going well in the opening partnership, we've been going all right. 

I've never seen `Purdy' strike the ball so cleanly. So hopefully that will continue, and if he's dominating the first six, and I'm not doing too well at the other end, happy days if we're going well.

Barry Chambers:  Four wickets, a bonus for you, the second best T20 figures for Ireland.

Paul Stirling: Don't know about that, bowling my off spin, but yeah it's just nice, nice to get four for, and win the game.

Barry Chambers: Some great bits of fielding there, James Shannon among the best catches.

Paul Stirling: Absolutely class, three good catches I think. two from Shannon and one from `Docks', which always helps backing up the bowlers. I think they gave us a little bit of a scare in the first 8 to 9 overs, they were up with the rate with not many wickets down. So it was nice to really turn it around and putting the screw on, and end up winning by eighty odd runs.

Barry Chambers:   Back to Bangladesh, you've obviously played there in the Bangladesh Premier League, what can we expect?

Paul Stirling: A tough challenge, that will be for the start, in hard conditions. But we've now got, I think, four or five months to prepare for that. So hopefully by the time it comes along, we'll be ready, and hopefully get through that preliminary stage, and into the World Cup.

Barry Chambers:Ireland belong, obviously, on the world stage, this is our seventh time in the finals?

Paul Stirling: Yeah it's good, I think most of the times I've been involved we've qualified, so it's another one today, another tick in the box, and hopefully we can go and progress into the latter stages of the World Cup,