IRELAND PULL OFF THE UNTHINKABLE, SWEEP INDIA 2-0

Forty-eight hours after stunning the cricketing world at Stormont, Ireland went back out, and did it all again. The victory margin was the slimmest possible - one run - but the triumph was historic. The reigning T20 World Champions well and truly humbled by a team ranked 10 places below them in the ICC T20 team rankings. What’s truly remarkable though is that this ended the extremely dominant run of the Indian T20I juggernaut. India hadn't lost a bilateral series in nearly three years and sixteen matches. They have now. 

If the first game was built on recovery, the second was built on nerve. Ireland again had to dig themselves out of trouble, slipping early before Harry Tector, playing his 100th T20I, and Ben Calitz put together a defiant 65-run stand off just 44 balls to drag the total to 154 for 8. Not a formidable total by any stretch of the imagination, but nobody told the Irish bowlers that.

Jai Moondra, the hero of the hour once more, set the tone before India had even settled. His very first ball of the chase removed Sanju Samson. His next over accounted for Abhishek Sharma too. Sending early shockwaves in the Indian camp. The icing on the cake for Moondra was when he got the wicket of Indian captain Shreyas Iyer, ripping through the Indian top order. A great piece of fielding by Calitz meant India were reeling at 35 for 4 and chasing shadows.

Tilak Varma tried to drag India back into it with a fighting 55, and for a while a 65-run stand with Shivam Dube threatened to spoil the fairytale script. But both fell within overs of each other, and the required rate crept back up. Harshit Rana’s cameo brought India very much within touching distance of chasing down the target, but a mishit to long on meant India needed 8 off the final ball. Tucker ensured it was a legitimate delivery and even though debutant Prince Yadav smashed his very first ball in international cricket for six to make hearts skip a beat in Belfast, it was all too little too late. Moondra finished with 3 for 32 and a second successive Player of the Match award, with Matt Hollard (3 for 26) again doing damage with the new ball.

What makes this result remarkable isn't just the scoreline. It's who wasn't there to produce it. Ireland have now beaten the world champions twice without six of their first-choice players — Paul Stirling, Mark Adair, Josh Little, Curtis Campher, Barry McCarthy and Jordan Neill all missing due to injuries. A squad assembled almost out of necessity has delivered the two biggest results in the history of Irish men's cricket inside a single weekend.

Captain Lorcan Tucker, who scored back-to-back fifties before this game and then watched his bowlers finish the job, struggled to find the right words for it afterwards. "We will be front page news after this," Tucker said, before adding that he hoped the performance had given a generation of young Irish cricketers something to chase.

With Irish cricket at an all-time high, the ETPL’s entry in Europe is poised to take the sport in the continent to newer heights. A six-team competition built around growing the game across Ireland, Scotland and the Netherlands now has the perfect advertisement for what cricket in the region can produce on the biggest of stages. Two games, one nerve-shredding finish, and a result nobody outside the Ireland dressing room even dreamt of. Stormont will not forget this weekend in a hurry.