Consistent performances please captain Porterfield

CALCUTTA, India (AP): Captain William Porterfield has been impressed with the consistency of his Irish team, which signed off at the World Cup with an impressive six-wicket victory over fellow Associate nation the Netherlands yesterday.

Ireland surpassed a huge target of 307 with 14 deliveries to spare yesterday for a second win in the seven-team group.

Ireland had earlier pulled off a shock three-wicket win over England at Bangalore and was the most impressive of the lower-rung teams in the tournament.

Ireland also competed closely in other matches, losing to Bangladesh by 27 runs and to the West Indies by 44 runs.

Even India had to work hard for a five-wicket win over Ireland - putting pressure on the International Cricket Council after its decision to cut the number of teams competing at the next World Cup from 14 to 10.

"We've been doing well in the past few years,'' Porterfield said. "It was a great job by us and we were not under pressure despite losing a few wickets together at one stage.''

good partnerships

Porterfield said it was important to stay in the game until the end in a high-scoring match against Netherlands, particularly after the record-opening partnership of 171 he shared with Paul Stirling (101).

"We had a few good partnerships which helped us make the chase. It is always good to be having a chance till the last eight or 10 overs of a match,'' he said. "We've turned up for every game, consistent with the ball and a few century stands, but haven't backed it up with the 50-60 stands but that's what we did today.''

Dutch captain Peter Borren said he was disappointed his squad failed to register a win despite starting the tournament with a very close match against England and finishing with a strong batting performance against Ireland.

"It was a defendable total, but the second half of our performance was pretty disappointing,'' Borren said. "We batted pretty well but did not show discipline in bowling and dropped some catches, we probably should have won.''

Borren said four run outs off the last four balls of Netherlands' innings was a strange occurrence but didn't have a big impact on the outcome of the game.

"We would probably have got a few more runs off those four balls, but we were happy with the total,'' he said. "We hope to do better if we get a chance to play in the World Cup again.''