Ireland will continue to focus on the process when they resume their five-match series against Afghanistan at Stormont on Monday, after failing to complete a hat-trick of wins in Friday’s third match of their latest T20 series.

That’s the view of Ireland batting coach Gary Wilson who is backing this squad to come good when it matters, on the World Cup stage in October.

“We have to stay positive,” he said. “We are trying to focus on the process. Everyone will have seen all summer the way we have been trying to play. We will have slightly off days, we were slightly off today, but the beauty of the way we are playing and the talent of this squad is that you never feel out of the game.

“In the past when we were 80 for six (chasing 190 on Friday), the game is dead but there is a genuine belief in the changing room that we are never out of the game.”

Fionn Hand came into the team as a bowler but ended up scoring 36, the highest score by a number nine on his T20 debut.

“We don’t see any weak links,” added Wilson. “The guys are putting the hard work in training, they are buying into the way we want to play. I don’t think we have had the results we deserved (this summer) but we can’t focus on results too much now. If we win we won’t get too high, if we lose, like today we’ll not get too low and we’ll come back on Monday.

Ireland have won only two of their 13 matches this summer but the standard of opposition has been better than it has ever been and that will only stand the team in good stead, believes Wilson.

“New Zealand are the number one ODI side, India are the number one T20 side, South Africa the way they played in England and now Afghanistan are good sides,” he said.

“If we’d been playing the teams ranked around us the way we have been playing we would be beating them but this summer we have been playing world class sides and that’s going to happen more and more. Yes, we need to be turning those performances into wins but if we focus on the process we will be beating the big boys over the next couple of years.”