Ireland take the positives despite exit

The associate nation once again exceeded expectations at cricket’s premier global competition, with victories over Test-playing sides West Indies and Zimbabwe taking them to the brink of a quarter-final place.

Ireland needed to avoid defeat yesterday but despite Porterfield himself recording a century at Adelaide, Pakistan chased down a victory target of 238 with seven wickets and 23 balls to spare.

It meant that Ireland finished fifth in Pool B, behind the Windies on net run-rate only, and Porterfield believes his team can take plenty of heart from their performances in the last few weeks.

“Overall, I’m very pleased with how the lads have stuck at it,” he said. “We’ve come in, we’ve beaten two Test nations, we’ve played some very good cricket. There are a lot of things we can take from this competition moving forward.

“For now we are disappointed. We had very high hopes today, we came in with a lot of confidence with how we were playing and that’s testament to where we’re at as a team.”