Andy Balbirnie says his team will remember famous seven wicket win over England ‘forever’

Andy Balbirnie said his Ireland team would remember their stunning seven-wicket win over England ‘forever’, and admitted: ‘It’s huge for the sport back home. There’s not been a lot of cricket in the country due to Covid, so hopefully we’ve given people a bit of a boost.’

Team-mates who live in the Republic of Ireland now face a fortnight’s quarantine when they arrive home, unlike those from north of the border, but the prospect didn’t faze Balbirnie, a Dubliner.

‘It’ll be a strange two weeks,’ said the Ireland captain. ‘I’m sure I’ll find a couple of books, or I might watch this game four or five times. This result is right up there. I don’t know if it’s sunk in yet.’

Ireland captain Andy Balbirnie claims their win over England will go down long in the memory

He hit a century along with Paul Stirling as the team chased 329 runs to shock the hosts 

Paul Stirling, his fellow centurion, said: ‘We’ve chased over 300 a number of times, particularly in World Cups, so we knew we could do it. 

‘It freed us up to go hard at the top, have a bit of fun and it was a solid chase in the end.’

England captain Eoin Morgan has spent several seasons with Stirling at Middlesex, and lamented missed chances in the field – especially a drop by James Vince when Stirling had 95.

England skipper Eoin Morgan admitted the team were outplayed and had ‘an average day’

‘Paul Stirling had a day out and he has the ability to do that,’ said Morgan. He’s as dangerous an opening batsman as we play against. But we play against world-class players all the time. You need to take those opportunities, because he will hurt you.

‘Full credit to Ireland: they’ve outplayed us. We had an average day, and stuttered throughout. 

‘We thought if we played well enough we could post upwards of 370, maybe more. Even with 328, I thought we had enough variation in our line-up to defend that.’