EAST MEAD­OW, New York – Three play­ers with ties to the Caribbean – led by for­mer Bar­ba­dos Pride left-han­der Nicholas Kir­ton – pro­pelled Cana­da to a con­fi­dence-boost­ing, 12-run win against Ire­land in the ICC Men’s Twen­ty20 World Cup on Fri­day.

Kir­ton hit the top score of 49 from 35 balls that earned him the Play­er-of-the-Match award and set the foun­da­tion for the Cana­di­an to­tal of 137 for sev­en af­ter they were put in to bat in their Group A match on the un­re­li­able Nas­sau Coun­ty Sta­di­um drop-in pitch.

Guyana-born pac­er Je­re­my Gor­don and Dilon Heyliger fol­lowed up with tidy spells, and the Irish were re­strict­ed to 125 for sev­en from their al­lo­ca­tion of 20 overs in re­ply.

Cana­da play­ing in the T20 World Cup for the first time, and the re­sult was wel­comed af­ter they lost the tour­na­ment open­er against co-hosts and neigh­bours, Unit­ed States by sev­en wick­ets this past Sat­ur­day in the Amer­i­can city of Dal­las.

“I think just com­ing back from ob­vi­ous­ly the first game, where we thought we should have won that game was good,” he said. “I feel like all three de­part­ments, we kind of clicked [in this game], so it’s a mag­nif­i­cent win for us,” Gor­dan told re­porters dur­ing a post-play news con­fer­ence.

“I’m very hap­py ob­vi­ous­ly to con­tribute to the team suc­cess be­cause I per­son­al­ly felt my over is what kind of gave it away the last game, so for me to come back and help the team get over the line – to me, I feel like I’ve done a good job, so I’m quite hap­py.

He added: “I mean it’s very emo­tion­al… I mean like there’s a lot of emo­tions ob­vi­ous­ly like we’re hap­py, we’re proud to have won – but al­so, we’re 2-0 – we ac­tu­al­ly beat Ire­land in 2019 in the qual­i­fiers in Dubai.

“So, we kind of had that bit of con­fi­dence com­ing in that if we stuck to our plans, and we’re dis­ci­plined enough, and we get a good to­tal, we fig­ure we could ac­tu­al­ly de­fend it if we were dis­ci­plined and I’m hap­py we were able to do that.”

Cana­da crawled to 37 for two at the close of the Pow­er Play af­ter Navneet Dhali­w­al was caught at back­ward point off Mark Adair for six in the third over, and fel­low open­er Aaron John­son was caught at deep back­ward square leg off Craig Young for 14 in the fifth over.

The Cana­di­ans were left reel­ing on 53 for four in the ninth over af­ter Par­gat Singh was caught at third man off Young for 18 in the sev­enth over, and Dil­preet Ba­jwa gave a re­turn catch to Gareth De­lany.

Kir­ton, the top scor­er for the Cana­di­ans against the Unit­ed States with 51, struck three fours and two six­es, and he drew on all of his ex­pe­ri­ence to pull Cana­da out of trou­ble, putting on 73 with Shreyas Mov­va for the fifth wick­et.

When the 26-year-old left-han­der was caught at short fine leg off Bar­ry Mc­Carthy in the penul­ti­mate over, he had al­ready trans­formed the com­plex­ion of the in­nings and giv­en his side hope of a first win in the tour­na­ment.

Ire­land closed the Pow­er Play on 31 for one, but their top or­der could on­ly find the bound­ary once, and Gor­don took two for 16 from four overs, and Heyliger sup­port­ed with two for 18 from his four overs to tight­en the grip and ush­er Cana­da over the fin­ish line.

Adair hit the top score of 34, and George Dock­rell was not out on 30, but no oth­er Irish bats­man reached 20.

“I think they gen­er­al­ly bowled very well,” Ire­land cap­tain Paul Stir­ling said. “They hit their lengths a lot bet­ter than us. I think they ac­tu­al­ly did go full a cou­ple of times in the last four overs and paid the price, a lit­tle bit like we did, and then as soon as they went back to that hard length, that ba­si­cal­ly got them through and won them the game in the end.

“To be hon­est… I think we just want to play as good a crick­et as we pos­si­bly can. I’ve sort of ham­mered for at least the last year that if we don’t play our best crick­et, we will not win games of crick­et, so we need to get back to our best for next week.

“We’ve got two huge games – still mas­sive every time you put on the shirt you want to go and win, but no rea­son why we can’t go and beat the USA and Pak­istan. We need to play a lot bet­ter if we’re go­ing to want to do that. But dif­fer­ent con­di­tions, we know them slight­ly bet­ter, and will cer­tain­ly be giv­en it as best a crack as we can.”

Group A con­tin­ues on Sun­day when po­lit­i­cal and sport­ing arch-ri­vals In­dia and Pak­istan meet at the same venue, where Cana­da face the Pak­ista­nis on Tues­day, and Ire­land play the Unit­ed States on Fri­day at the Cen­tral Broward Re­gion­al Park in the Amer­i­can city of Lauder­hill in the state of Flori­da.

CMC

Scores:

CANA­DA 137 for sev­en off 20 overs (Nicholas Kir­ton 49, Shreyas Mov­va 37; Bar­ry Mc­Carthy 2-24, Craig Young 2-32).

IRE­LAND 125 for sev­en off 20 overs (Mark Adair 34, George Dock­rell 30 not out; Je­re­my Gor­don 2-16, Dilon Heyliger 2-18).

Cana­da beat Ire­land by 12 runs.

Play­er of the Match: Nicholas Kir­ton (Cana­da)