FOR a while now Ireland have regarded Scotland as their bogey team, the lower-ranked underdog who keeps cropping up to rain on their parade. This was the Scots fourth win on the trot in this format, knocking them out of the last T20 World Cup and applying an early death sentence to their hopes in this one.

So when do you stop calling them a bogey team and start calling them a better one?

It was a bracing windy day in Manchester, one that both sets of Celtic cousins – and their many supporters here – are well used to. Gaby Lewis won the toss and asked Scotland to bat. Opening the bowling, Aimee Maguire kept it tight until the last ball of the first over when Darcey Carter came down the track and lifted the ball straight back over long off. The tall Orla Prendergast was too far in from the boundary and watched it sail over her head and then bounce once before going for 4. Had the fielder been on the rope it was a straightforward catch.

The Scots were soon pegged back by Ava Canning and Arlene Kelly although the pitch gave them little encouragement.

Canning, from the Leinster club, has been in and out of the side since her debut in 2021. But she has been working hard at her game and has reaped the rewards. Her workload has been managed and she burst onto the Evoke Super Series with career best figures of 4-1-8-4 last month.

She has proved an excellent wicket-taker, picking up 12 scalps in her six games since for Ireland.

Yesterday she was the pick of the attack, relentlessly accurate with some excellent variations. She forced Katherine Fraser into a false shot with the first ball of her second over, and the Scot was well taken on the boundary by Alice Tector, drafted into the side primarily to give a boost to the team’s fielding.

That catch would have had head coach Lloyd Tennant stroking his chin and whispering the old A-Team line about loving it when a plan comes together. But he would have been less enamoured when the teenager dropped a catch off Lister with two overs remaining. It wasn’t the only missed chance.

The old failings in the field were supposed to be banished by now, but Ireland keep making things difficult for themselves.

Maguire didn’t need a fielder, her yorker finding a way past Darcey Carter’s angled bat and bowled her middle stump. That brought together the Bryce sisters, Kathryn and Sarah, and the pair tormented Ireland just as they have so often before.

Their first 50 partnership came up in 32 balls, their second at exactly the same rate.

There had been only four boundaries in the first ten overs but that was soon to change. Sarah Bryce used her feet to dominate Cara Murray, hitting 20 off the 11th over, including a shot over drag that would have counted six on a full-sized outfield.

‘They had a good start,’ admitted Lewis, ‘But that middle period just ran away from us, and Scotland played very well.’

Ireland tried everything to oust the Bryces, but it was a feather through to Hunter off Kelly that robbed Sarah of a fifty – her fourth T20 score of 49 against Ireland.

Her sister got to 60 before Murray held on to catch off Canning, sparking a fine Irish fightback.

The last four over of the innings cost just 19, with three wickets falling. Canning’s 19th was Ireland’s best moment of the day, a stunning 2-2 the result, followed by five off the 20th bowled by Prendergast.

Whatever hopes Ireland entertained of chasing down 161 – and they must have ffancied themselves – didn’t last very long.

The incredible decision to persist with Alana Dalzell as opener, after three successive first-ballers, ensured Ireland were one down at the end of the first over.

Lewis had missed seven weeks of the season with a foot injury picked up while playing for Lancashire on this ground. She returned for the warm-ups, making 5 and 18, but looked like a player out of sorts when she tried to charge Fraser and was stumped by Sarah Bryce for 11.

Ireland’s hopes depended on a strong Hunter/Prendergast stand, and the pair settled well, putting on 30 in four overs. Hunter especially was in destructive form, splitting the field with her powerful drives before she was bowled for 39 trying to reverse sweep spinner Kathryn Fraser. Ireland were 58-2 after ten overs, already 13 behind the Scots rate, and that continued to soar.

Hunter’s dismissal was followed by the decisive over of the game. Kirstie Gordon played for Scotland in her teens, when Ireland last faced her nine years ago in Sharjah, with Gaby Lewis the only survivor from that victory. In fact, Gordon’s last Irish wicket before yesterday was Robyn Lewis, the captain’s older and long-retired sister.

Gordon was forced to declare for England to take up a domestic contract with Loughborough Lightning and her success with that side led to an England call up. She fell down the pecking order there and it took a change of regulations for ICC to permit her to return to the land of her birth in time for this competition. And how she cashed in.

Her slow left-arm spin bamboozled Rebecca Stokell, induced a return catch from Leah Paul, before Tector played all round her first ball faced. Three wickets in four balls was the return for Gordon, who missed a hat-trick by a whisker off the first ball of her next over.

Prendergast and Kelly played some good shots, the former giving the Irish fans something to cheer about with a huge six, but both fell to run outs trying to chase the increasingly impossible target. A 40-run defeat was a fair reflection on the gulf in class.

Lewis tried to put a brave face on it: ‘We’ll go back to the drawing board and hopefully improve. It is a long tournament. There are still teams we feel we can really put up a fight against.’