World Cup 2015: We don’t like words like upsets, minnows and associates, says Ed Joyce

Much quieter. I wasn’t playing in 2007 but that was a shock win. No doubt about that. It was our first World Cup win and it was heady times for Irish cricket. 2011 was about getting more professional; beating England was of course good. We shall have a few beers now. But we got to travel tomorrow and it won’t be too wild.

Where would you place this win?

It was a complete performance. That’s why it’s so satisfying. 300 isn’t easy to chase.

Is there a change in how other teams see you guys these days?

I know the teams never used to use video analysis for us before. Now they do. It’s nice to be respected. We’re at a level-playing field. Others have realised that.

Your captain (William Porterfield) has said he doesn’t like upsets and labels like associates and minnows.

I completely agree with William. In the long run, if the game has to go worldwide, then we have to get away from talking about associates and affiliates and full members. We don’t want to differentiate ourselves from the Scotlands and Afghanistans. We want them to come with us. That’s why we don’t like upsets, minnows and all those kinds of words. We know we are an underdog; that’s fine, we don’t have the resources the other big teams have but we plan very well and prepare well to win our games. We need to get away from that minnows tag.

How do you manage to maintain consistency and keep improving without playing a number of games?

We have lots of cricketers playing county cricket. I would love to say that we have lots of good Irish cricketers but to be able to produce that, we need to play in county circuit. The idea in the long run is to get the Irish domestic cricket going properly.

But as a national team you don’t get to play often…

Irish teams have always gelled well and we are led by a fantastic captain. We are just trying to follow him to be perfectly honest. That’s the start. Obviously Phil Simmons  (our coach) has done a great job and Adrien Birrel before him.

How much pressure is there in playing these World Cup games?

There is pressure. We talked about it ahead of this game that we batsmen should go out there and play with freedom even if there is this kind of pressure. We are lucky to have Paul Stirling open for us as he anyways does that (bats freely). Myself and Niall O’Brien are nurdlers to be honest and we told ourselves that we are not going to that today. We are going to try and dominate  and obviously it worked out. I think it’s a good lesson for us. If you look at the top teams, they all play with such freedom. 300 is probably a par score for those guys and you need to play with that freedom to get up to that score.

Why do you consider your side to be underdogs when you never let the game run away from you today?

We don’t play in IPL, we don’t have players like Chris Gayle, we don’t have guys who can bowl 90mph and those guys do and it does give an advantage — that’s why I said underdogs.

What else do you desire as a team?

What else do we want? We need to play a lot more fixtures.  Otherwise, it’s pointless and we are just going to be in that qualifying tournament. We need more fixtures, that’s what we want. We certainly do not guarantee winning many of them, or any of them or we might win lots of them but for us to grow as a cricket nation, we need to play lots more.