Brilliant Pakistan shock Ireland

A brilliant team performance from Pakistan gave them an opening day 57-run victory at the ICC Women's World Cup Qualifier over a strongly fancied Ireland side.

Sana Mir was named Player of the Match for her brilliant spell of 2-17, but captain Urooj Mumtaz was absolutely delighted with all of her side's efforts

She said: 'The girls did exceptionally well and I am extremely proud to be captain of the Pakistan side. It was a great team effort - everybody contributed with the bat and the ball and the fielding was excellent.

'Pulling off this victory gives the team a lot of confidence for the rest of the week.'

An excellent opening partnership of 60 set Pakistan on their way, after winning the toss and batting, with Tasqeen Qadeer (30) and Bismah Maroof (18), both in good touch.

Although many Pakistan players got themselves in, nobody went onto make a big score, although six run outs, five of which involved Isobel Joyce, didn't help their cause and in the end they may have felt that 165-9 wasn't going to be enough.

Ireland started strongly in reply, but once their opening partnership of 40 was ended, they lost regular wickets against a well balanced Pakistani bowling line-up, with only the Joyce sisters making more than twenty.

Irish skipper Heather Whelan was left disappointed by the result and thought there was plenty of work to do in both the batting and bowling departments.

She said: 'Bowling wise we need to cut out our wides and no balls - we bowled far too many wides which is not acceptable at this level.

'Batting wise our top batters really need to start coming through for us in the next rest of the tournament.'