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March 05, 2007 (Link to Scorecard)

Ireland have never played in the World Cup before, but in their warm-up game against World No.1 - South Africa, they definitely proved their worth of being a part of this edition of the Cup. The South Africans in the end managed a hard earned victory of just 35 runs to save their pride!

The Proteas looked almost dead against the minnows when they slipped to a miserable 91 for 8 after electing to bat first. But a great innings from Andrew Hall batting as low as no.9 had rescued the South Africans to a reasonably good total of 192 at the Sir Frank Worrell Memorial Ground in St Augustine. All the first three SA wickets fell to the 30-year-old medium pacer Dave Langford-Smith. Having lost its first three batsmen for just 42 on the board, South Africa couldn't recover from the inroads with wickets going down quickly. It was a great partnership of 85 between Hall (67 from 98 balls with 6 fours and a six) and the left handed Robin Peterson (29) that had taken South Africa from 91 for 8 to 176 for 9. Among the bowlers, Langford-Smith finished with 3 for 30 in 8 overs while David Johnston, a 32-year-old medium pacer became the most successful bowler with 4 for 40 in 10 overs.

There were enough runs on the board for the SA bowlers to defend but Ireland did extremely well to keep their hopes alive of staging an upset. Ireland at one stage was quite close of getting to the target when they were at 139 for 5. But none of the settled batsmen had kicked on to make a bigger score. Andre Botha of South Africa origin was the top scorer with 40. But the fall of Botha's wicket gave South Africa the chance to fight back and remove the remaining five wickets for just 18 runs. Charl Langeveldt with 4 for 31 and Andrew Hall with 3 for 26 were instrumental in providing the much needed breakthroughs. Ireland battled it out for 44.2 overs before folding out for 157.

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