This 94-year-old former US citizen has one last wish — to die an Indian
3 min readJun 27, 2026 04:58 PM IST Indian team in action. (Deepak Malik / CREIMAS for BCCI)Ireland made history on Friday, defeating India by 34 runs in the first T20I in Belfast. This is the first time Ireland has beaten India in any format of cricket. The lesser-known Irish batters and bowlers humbled the World Champions. Former Indian opener Sadagoppan Ramesh did not mince his words, saying the Indian team was under the impression that this tour was a picnic, and he also praised the hosts. “Ireland deserve praise for using the bigger boundaries and testing the Indian batters out with the short delivery. It was clear that India played the match casually. They thought the Ireland series was a picnic tour, which they’ll win easily and were serious only about the England series. But Ireland taught India a lesson by saying this is no picnic spot,” Ramesh said on his YouTube channel.“The Ireland series was not even originally scheduled. It was like a pickle to the main course, which was England. But India embarassingly couldn’t handle the spice of the pickle, which is Ireland. Irrespective of what excuses can be cooked up for this, it’s a shocking and terrible defeat for Team India. Overconfidence is never healthy and it’s because of that, India’s story was over last night. India must be confident but not overconfident,” he added. Ramesh noted that this loss is even more of a shock because most of the Indian players have been playing T20 cricket for about four months in the form of the T20 World Cup and the Indian Premier League. “Yes, even an elephant occasionally slips up. But how can it happen against an Ireland? This is a shocker, especially for a team whose last T20 match was the final of a World Cup. After a month of T20 cricket in the World Cup, all the Indian players played another 3 months of IPL. To play 4 months of continuous T20 cricket and then lose to Ireland is unexplainable,” said Ramesh. “India played shockingly poor cricket. They’ve been dropping catches from the T20 World Cup to the IPL to yesterday. They seem to always drop high catches. In the IPL, you can just bat or bowl and hide your fielding because of the Impact Player option. But in international cricket, you’ve to be a good fielder to be in the 11. Many players escaped in the IPL because of the Impact Player rule by just batting.”
