World Cup 2015 Match 30 Ireland vs Zimbabwe Review; Ireland hold nerves in the end to steal the win

World Cup 2015 Match 30 Ireland vs Zimbabwe Review; Ireland hold nerves in the end to steal the win: Another nerve wrecking match from two of the most underrated teams in this tournament. Ireland f faced Zimbabwe in a battle for minnow supremacy at Hobart. Keep reading to find out how the match turned out.

Ireland won the toss on a typical slow Hobart track and batted first. They did not have a good start losing Paul Stirling early, but after that Ed Joyce who scored a wonderful 112 off  103 balls along with Porterfield (29) and Andy Balbirnie (97 off 79 balls) took Ireland to a mammoth 331/8 in 50 overs.

Ed Joyce looked in supreme touch and along with Balbirnie who missed his ton by 3 runs, added 138 runs for the 4th wicket. The Zimbabwe bowlers did go for runs but put enough pressure on Ireland to scale back the total to 331 because they were on a course for 370.

Zimbabwe started their batting by losing wickets early and were 74/4 in 17 overs before Captain Brendon Taylor who made an almost match winning 121 off 91 balls  and Sean Williams who made 96 missing his century by 4 runs, added 150 runs for the 5th wicket. Zimbabwe were looking on course for a great victory, but Alex Cusack and Kevin O’Brien struck in consecutive overs removing both the set batsmen.

Zimbabwe needed 26 runs off the last 12 deliveries when Tawanda Mupariwa hit Kevin O’Brien for 19 runs in the penultimate over leaving 7 to get off the last over. Cusack removed Chakabva on the first ball of the over and then removed Mupariwa to win the match for Ireland.

There was indeed a moment of controversy when Sean Williams was caught by John Mooney right on the boundary with inconclusive evidence of his foot touching the boundary pads. While the commentators were convinced it was a six, the third umpire gave Williams out and Zimbabwe lost a wicket instead of getting 6 runs for that shot. In the end, Zimbabwe lost by 5 runs.

Ed Joyce got the Man of the match for his 112 runs.

Brief Scores:
Ireland 331 (E Joyce 112, A Balbirnie 97; T Chatara 3/61) defeated Zimbabwe 326 (B Taylor 121, S Williams 96; A Cusack 4/32) by 5 runs.

Records and Trivia:
# Ireland now have won 7 match in World Cups- the most by an Associate Team in WC history.

# Brendan Taylor’s 121 is the 150th century of World Cup history – he is also the first Zimbabwe captain to hit 100 in WC.

# 4 individual scores of 90+ in a World Cup match: Australia v South Africa at Basseterre 24/03/2007, Zimbabwe v Ireland at Hobart today.