IRELAND kick off their World Cup tomorrow night in Nelson, a game that will be crucial to their hopes of reaching the quarter-finals.

At 10pm Irish time William Porterfield's men will take to the field hoping to catch the West Indies cold in this city on the northern tip of South Island.

Both sides have struggled with form lately but at least Ireland got back in winning ways on Thursday with an impressive win over Bangladesh.

At the same time the Windies struggled to a three-run win over Scotland and that after a run of bad defeats to India, South Africa and England.

The Windies are famous for their flamboyant batsmen but their leading light, Chris Gayle, has been in a serious run of dire form.

In the run-in to the competition he batted eight times but made just 72 runs, including a sequence of 0, 0 and 1 in the last week.

The Caribbean masters, winners of the first two World Cups in 1975 and 1979, have been in a heap since a player revolt led to the abandoning of a tour to India in November. Two leading players, Kieron Pollard and Dwayne Bravo were dropped and the captaincy handed to the inexperienced Jason Holder.

To cap it all, their best bowler, mystery spinner Sunil Narine, was accused of throwing the ball and sent for remedial work. He opted out of the World Cup saying he wasn't ready.

In charge of masterminding Ireland's plan to defeat the Windies is one of their own finest players, Phil Simmons.

He has taken on his native islands before and won't let anything get in the way of an Irish win.

“There will be no emotion invested in the game for me”, he says. “It is a game we have to win and that's how I look at it. The emotion will come afterwards, if the West Indies are playing someone else.

“Once they are playing Ireland, it is all about Ireland.”

Although the draw means the pressure is on Ireland to win tomorrow night, Simmons says he hasn't set a target of beating the Windies.

“Our target is beat every team in the competition. If you go to the World Cup thinking 'we want to win three games', inevitably, you will fall short. We want to win all the games in the group and then think about the quarter-finals.”

Ireland's bowlers found some rhythm to beat the Banglas, but conceded an alarming 21 wides. Having lost Boyd Rankin, Trent Johnston and Tim Murtagh in the last 18 months much will fall on the shoulders of John Mooney, Max Sorensen and the rookie Craig Young.

There are also concerns in the batting, where only Ed Joyce, Niall O'Brien and Andrew Balbirnie have shown recent form. The previously dependable opening partnership of Porterfield and Paul Stirling has fallen away badly with just one 50 between them all winter.

But Ireland always play above themselves at World Cups, as those famous wins over Pakistan and England show.

No-one should bet again it happening again - starting tomorrow night in Nelson.