Ireland captain Andrew Balbirnie acknowledged India's bench depth and stated that they must be at the top of their game to force a result in the two-match T20 series, which begins on Sunday.
The Hardik Pandya led Indian side are scheduled to play Ireland on June 26 and 28 in Dublin.At the same time, some of their teammates will be taking part in a practise game at Grace Road in preparation for the fifth Test against England at Edgbaston.
The depth of India, which allows them to play multiple teams in different forms all at once, was acknowledged by Ireland skipper Andrew Balbirnie prior to the T20I series. In addition, he stated that the IPL had contributed to opening doors for future Indian cricketers to play internationally.
"Nowadays, any Indian team you play is going to be a good team. It kind of shows the depth of Indian cricket that they can put out two teams. We couldn't do that - there's no way we could put out a Test team and a T20 team at the same time, we just don't have the numbers for that, " Balbirnie said in a press conference.
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"With the IPL being so successful over a number of years, a lot of young guys are coming in and putting their names forward to get into that first eleven for India. And with the World Cup in October, there'll be a lot of guys looking for those places. So we know it's going to be a good Indian team and we have to be at our best to try to force a result," he added.
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"One of the main messages we always try to get, particularly to our bowlers, is to just take them in and just kind of catch your breath back because it can happen so quickly and the ball can be flying all over the place, and sometimes you can rush into things. So we have to make sure that we kind of take that moment to gather ourselves in the important moments. But hopefully we've had a lot of experience playing top teams in 50-over cricket and T20 cricket," he noted.
Only three times in T20s,India and Ireland have faced off, with India coming out on top each time. The first time the two teams played each other was at the 2010 T20 World Cup,following a two-match series in 2018.
