International T20s have been around since 2006-07, and there weren’t many games on the calendar in the earlier days. Nowadays, you’ll find many bilateral T20 series taking place and players get more chances to build milestones in this format. One player who has been super consistent in this format over the years is Ireland’s opening batsman, Paul Stirling.
While he’s played for a number of T20 franchises across the world, Stirlo has always been pretty consistent when playing in green for his national side as well. He’s been playing for Ireland since his late teens and today, he’s become the fourth batsman in T20 international cricket to get to an elite club of 3,000+ T20I career runs.
Paul Stirling reaches 3,000 T20I runs
The Irish opener is currently playing against Afghanistan in a home series and after having no success against India, New Zealand, and South Africa this summer. Here however, Ireland managed a 3-2 series victory against Afghanistan and Stirling had a big role to play in this series. In the last game, Ireland won by 7 wickets (D/L method) to complete a well-deserved series win.
And while it was a sweet win for the hosts, it would’ve been sweeter for Stirling as he also completed some personal milestones, becoming only the fourth to join this elite club of 3,000+ career T20I runs, joining some really massive names in international cricket. The only others to get here are Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma, and Martin Guptill; it’s quite some company to be in, isn’t it?!
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The 31-year old had a best score of only 31 runs in the five games against Afghanistan which ended yesterday, including 16(10) that came in their rain-interrupted game last night at Belfast. His T20I record now looks like 3,011 runs in 114 T20I games, which is a batting average of 28+, an impressive strike rate of 134+, 20 fifties and a century to his name as well.
It was only a month ago from today that Stirling scored one of the best centuries of his career, smashing an ODI ton against New Zealand in a chase that seemed very unlikely initially, but he made them see the light in that game. Stirling and Harry Tector got centuries and he was unfortunately dismissed at a time when things turned for the visitors and the result went their way eventually too.
Paul Stirling became the 4th player after Martin Guptill, Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli to score 3,000 runs in men's T20i.
— Mufaddal Vohra (@mufaddal_vohra) August 17, 2022
In a list where Kiwi and Indian batting giants exist, it’s great to see an Irishman there too. He will go down in Irish cricket history and we’re sure he’s got at least 3-4 years more of batting in him. After a packed home schedule over the last couple of months, Ireland now have a break from cricket for a while and we hope to see Stirling back in action when the 2022 T20 World Cup takes place later this year in Australia.
For similar updates on Ireland cricket and just generic cricketing records from around the world, stay tuned to ReadScoops.com…
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