Simmons Upbeat and Looking at the Positives Despite Warm Up Loss to Bangladesh

Ireland Coach Phil Simmons was happy with the way that Ireland bowled in today's defeat against fierce rivals Bangladesh.

Simmons was also full of praise for the batting display of the Bangladesh team, calling it one of the best batting displays he had seen against Ireland.

The Irish Coach highlighted his team's lack of partnerships with the bat as something that needs to be improved on.

All thoughts now turn to Sylhet and the start of the tournament proper on St Patrick's Day against the dangerous Zimbabwe.

Barry Chambers: Phil not the ideal preparation before the Zimbabwe game, but the batting of Stuart Thompson, I suppose, one bit positive to come out of this match?

Phil Simmons: There's a lot of things to come out of this match. I thought that was one of the best batting displays against us. So it's not say that we didn't bowl well, we bowled well still, but they batted well. So you give them that and you recognise that we still put the ball in the areas that we wanted to.

Batting wise we still have not enough partnerships, so it think that's the whole thing. But again the Skipper got runs and `Stuey' (Stuart Thompson) got runs, `Poynts' (Andrew Poynter) looked good, so we still have a lot to take out of this game.

Barry Chambers: As you say it wasn't that we've played particularly badly, they just improvised exceptionally well.

Phil Simmons: No, they know their wickets, and they played well. They hit the ball very well, so I'm not too worried about the bowling part, because we hit good areas today, but they batted well, you know, I expect that, so we take what we can take from here.

Barry Chambers: And moving on now to Sylhet for a huge game against Zimbabwe on Monday, are you looking forward to that one?

Phil Simmons: We have three huge games up there, and we need to just need to get ready for that. When we get there tomorrow we'll see what it's like over there, and then we can know how we go about things.