HEINRICH MALAN was pleased to announce a full strength 15-man squad yesterday for the T20 World Cup in Australia with pace bowlers Conor Olphert and Craig Young both passed fit to fly Down Under next Thursday.

The Ireland coach has kept faith with the players that played a ‘brave brand of cricket’ during the domestic season, running India, New Zealand and South Africa close before finally securing a series win against Afghanistan.

‘We’ve picked the 15 we stayed loyal to through the summer,” Malan said. “If you’d told us back in May that we’d push those big sides as we did we’d have chewed your arm off and now it’s important for individuals to maintain the upward curve.

“We want to hit the ground running when we get to Australia at the end of next week and we’re really excited about this journey.”

Malan explained that Simi Singh had been given the nod ahead Andy McBrine because of the YMCA spinner’s ability to turn the ball both ways but the continued absence of David Delany was skipped over at yesterday’s press conference.

Speedster Delany, who is also a quick scoring lower order bat, must look at the inclusion of Clontarf team-mate Fionn Hand in the squad and wonder what he has to do to add to the eight caps he won in 2019.

Ireland will initially be based in Sydney where they will train and play practice games at the Coogee Oval before flying down to Melbourne for two official warm-up matches then on to Hobart in Tasmania for the start of their tournament on October 17.

IRELAND SQUAD: Andrew Balbirnie (c), Paul Stirling, Mark Adair, Curtis Campher, Gareth Delany, George Dockrell, Stephen Doheny, Fionn Hand, Josh Little, Barry McCarthy, Conor Olphert, Simi Singh, Harry Tector, Lorcan Tucker (wk), Craig Young.