Ireland cricketer Ed Joyce says the team's mentality is different in this year's ICC World Cup.
The team opened this year's tournament with a win over the West Indies, but rather than over-celebrate after one impressive victory, Ireland are looking to follow that up with more positive results in the rest of the group stage.
Speaking to Off The Ball tonight, Joyce says they are putting pressure on themselves to succeed in their quest to qualify for the latter stages.
"We came into this World Cup aiming to get as far as we can, whereas in previous World Cups we probably didn't have that expectation on us. We feel like a good team and that on our day we can beat anyone. So we wanted to put pressure on ourselves in a good way to win games," he said, before looking ahead to their next game against UAE.
Looking towards the overall future for Irish cricket, Joyce believes the national team need more regular fixtures on the calendar.
"We need to get far more fixtures than the nine we've had in the last four years. To put into context, teams like Sri Lanka or England play 15 to 16 in the four-year period at least. So we're up against it in that sense. We need to get more fixtures to get the ranking points to come into the Top 8, which is how you qualify automatically for the next World Cup," he said.
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