Any Balbirnie and his fellow batters have an early chance to avenge Saturday’s crushing 183-run defeat in Sylhet today when Ireland face Bangladesh in the second of a three-match one-day international series.

Balbirnie was in no doubt where the blame lay for the dispiriting loss when after a bright opening partnership of 60 from Stephen Doheny and Paul Stirling, the Ireland batting crumbled to the tune of five wickets for 16 runs in six overs.

“That batting wasn’t good enough to win a game, we know that, and we’ll be looking to come back better,” skipper Balbirnie said.

The Bangladesh total of 338-8 - the Tigers’ highest in ODIs - was not an impossible target on a very good batting pitch and despite all the pre-match talk of combatting the home spinners it was their pacemen who did the early damage.

Stirling was a little unlucky to fall to a spectacular catch, Harry Tector suffered a rare failure, nicking off for three, and it needed a solid top score of 45 from George Dockrell to lift Ireland to 155 all out, and avoid an even bigger embarrassment.

Ireland’s seam attack, missing the injured trio of Josh Little, Barry McCarthy and Craig Young, had toiled patiently, with Graham Hume earning the reward of 4-60 for his persistence, while off-spinner Andy McBrine returned the best figures of 1-46.

The gamble of splitting ‘fifth bowler’ duties between leg spinner Gareth Delany and part-time offie Tector was not a success, though, and pointss to a debut for 20-year-old left-armer Matthew Humphreys, if not today then certainly in Thursday’s final game of the series.