Ireland's T20 World Cup qualification hopes have taken a major hit after they suffered an embarrassing defeat to Canada in Abu Dhabi this afternoon.
In their fourth group stage match, the Irish team failed to chase down a target of 157 which saw Canada achieve their first win against an ICC full member since 2003.
The defeat means that Ireland must now win their final two group matches while hoping for favourable results elsewhere in the hope of gaining automatic qualification.
Canada started well, after winning the toss and putting Ireland out to bowl first, until speedster David Delany (1-31) knocked back opener Rizwan Cheema’s stumps with his first ball.
Navneet Dhaliwal (69 from 51 balls), the Canadian captain, then took charge – hitting out with a combination of power shots and well-placed glides.
He brought up his third career half-century from 37 balls, sharing an impressive 111-run stand with Nitish Kumar (53).
While giving his team a great launchpad for the final overs - with the score on 124-2 with 5 overs to go, his dismissal gave Irish bowlers a sniff of a way back into the game.
The last five overs saw four wickets fall for just 32 runs, with Canada ending on 156-5 from their 20 overs.
The best Irish bowling performance of the day was Mark Adair, who went wicketless but bowled a miserly 0-21 from four overs.
In response, Ireland started poorly by losing Kevin O’Brien early for four, but looked to rectify the innings through a rapid 38-run stand between Paul Stirling and Gareth Delany (16).
The dismissal of Delany - run out after great fielding by Nitish Kumar at backward point - was quickly followed by the big loss of Balbirnie, who missed the last match through illness, for a first ball duck.
Ireland needed talisman Paul Stirling to stay in and build around, but soon after he tickled a ball through to the keeper and was out for 23.
A seemingly stabilising partnership of 29 between Harry Tector (22) and Gary Wilson (16) sought to get the Irish run chase back on track, however, the Canadian bowlers continued to plug away and wickets further came.
Tector and Wilson fell within two runs of each other, and the brakes were applied to the Irish run rate.
Mark Adair (12), Stuart Thompson (28*) and George Dockrell (13*) found late runs, but the target proved too difficult and Ireland fell 10 runs short.
The win leaves Ireland in fourth place in the Group B table with two games to play.
Automatic qualification for the World Cup will now take two convincing wins against Jersey (Friday) and Nigeria (Saturday) as well as results going favourably elsewhere.
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