5 Years, 10 months and 20 days! Ireland have finally registered their first ever win in Test cricket, beating Afghanistan by six wickets at the Tolerance Oval in Abu Dhabi. As soon as Lorcan Tucker hit the winning runs, there was elation in their camp winning in red-ball cricket for the first time. They are not a part of the World Test Championship as well which led to them not playing more than one Test on majority of occasions and played only one two-match series against Sri Lanka.
Coming back to their first-ever Test win, Andrew Balbirnie, the skipper led from the front for Ireland in the tricky 111-run chase scoring an unbeaten half-century helping the side win by six wickets on the third day itself. With this win, Ireland have also surpassed stronger teams like India, New Zealand, South Africa, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe in terms of number of matches taken to register first win in the longest format of the game. All these teams played more matches than Ireland to win a Test match for the first time.
As far as the Test match is concerned, Afghanistan won a very good toss and opted to bat. But Mark Adair's exceptional bowling skittled them for just 155 runs. Adair took five wickets for just 39 runs even as Ibrahim Zadran scored 53 while Karim Janat remained unbeaten on 41 but no other batter could hang around and play a big knock.
In reply, Ireland were propelled by decent contributions from several batters led by Paul Stirling. They scored 263 runs in their first innings and gained a crucial 108-run lead. Afghanistan put up an improved show in their second essay but again, none of their batters could go big as only skipper Hashmatullah Shahidi mustered 55 runs. Afghanistan were bundled out for 218 runs as they set a target of 111 runs for Ireland who stuttered up front losing three wickets for just 13 runs. But then captain Balbirnie stood strong to smash an unbeaten half-century making sure his team got over the line for the first time in the format.
