Ireland slump to Canada loss

Ireland's hopes of topping the group look over after their second defeat, losing to Canada by 10 runs. A second wicket stand of 111 between skipper Navneet Dhaliwal (69), and man-of-the-match Nitish Kumar (53) saw them post 156 for 5 - slightly above par.

It could have been worse for Ireland, who rarely threatened to break what would prove to be a match-winning partnership. Boyd Rankin picked up two wickets, while Mark Adair conceded just 21 in his four overs spell, as the Irish restricted Canada to 32 in the final five overs.

David Delany in action (©ICC)

The Irish reply started poorly as Kevin O'Brien holed out to the cover sweeper, but a rapid 38-run stand between Paul Stirling (23) and Gareth Delany (16) got Ireland back on top before disaster struck. First Delany was run out after great fielding by Nitish Kumar at backward point, followed by Balbirnie for a first ball duck.

Thereafter Ireland lost wickets every time they seemed to be getting into a position to challenge, and as the required rate climbed, it was evident there was to be no late dramatic twists, despite Stuart Thompson (28*) and George Dockrell (13*) finding late runs. "They got a few more than we would have liked with the bat, but credit to the two boys who put on the runs, I thought they played well," said skipper Gary Wilson afterwards.

Gareth Delany is run out following superb fielding by Nitish Kumar (©ICC)

"At half-time they were probably 10 runs or so more than we would have liked, but we still felt we could chase them down. But as we saw, it can be difficult to chase when teams put the squeeze on. "We thought we wanted to target the powerplay and put Gareth Delany up to three. But the run out, followed by Andrew Balbirnie going first ball put the brakes on us a little bit. We recovered ok, but when Harry Tector got out, we never really recovered from that.

"I thought Mark Adair was outstanding with the ball, helping to drag it back - as he has been all tournament, but we've unfortunately now got to go the hard way and rely on results elsewhere. They're all must win games for us now. "We just need to get a bit better in every department. We weren't able to chase down 150-odd today, on any ground on any wicket we should be able to do that, but we just need to look at every department and get 10% better."