T20 World Cup: Simi Singh in Ireland squad as Andy McBrine misses out

McBrine featured in Ireland's T20 series' against Afghanistan and South Africa this summer

Andy McBrine has missed out on a place in Ireland's 15-man T20 World Cup squad, with fellow spinner Simi Singh included.

Andrew Balbirnie will captain a settled selection, all of whom featured during Ireland's summer schedule.

Having failed to advance from the first round of last year's tournament, Heinrich Malan's side are out to reach the Super 12 stage in Australia.

They open their campaign against Zimbabwe on 17 October.

That game will be followed by a meeting with Scotland two days later before they face the West Indies on 21 October, with the top two from the group of four advancing.

Ireland T20 World Cup squad: Andrew Balbirnie (capt), Paul Stirling (vice-capt), Mark Adair, Curtis Campher, Gareth Delany, George Dockrell, Stephen Doheny, Fionn Hand, Josh Little, Barry McCarthy, Conor Olphert, Simi Singh, Harry Tector, Lorcan Tucker, Craig Young.

A busy summer concluded with Ireland securing a 3-2 series win over Afghanistan in Belfast.

"We landed with the 15 that we stayed loyal to throughout the summer," Malan said.

"I'm really excited about taking these boys on a really exciting journey."

Bowling all-rounder Singh has taken 41 wickets in 49 T20 internationals, and is given the nod over McBrine, who has 23 wickets in 32 games.

"It's always a difficult one but it's nice to have these tough conversations and try to build our squad," said Malan.

"Ultimately we feel Simi's maybe got one or two more tools in his toolbox at this stage.

"He can take the ball away from the right-hander, and even when you think about the match-up to the left-handers Simi has done a really good job in trying to take wickets, whereas Andy has obviously done really well from an economical point of view over the last 12 months.

"We're trying to encourage a brand of brave cricket in looking to take wickets, so there's a little bit of work for Andy to do in that space and he has received that message."

Ireland out to 'upgrade' T20 game

Ireland's 2021 T20 World Cup campaign ended with a disappointing defeat by Namibia

Ireland's 2021 World Cup campaign ended in bitter disappointment as they failed to advance from the first round for the fifth consecutive time, with a shock defeat by Namibia in Sharjah seeing them miss out on a top-two finish in their group.

While producing some stirring performances in the one-day format, Ireland have historically struggled in T20.

This summer they lost their first seven games in the format, losing series to India, New Zealand and South Africa before turning their fortunes around with the close-fought win over Afghanistan.

Improving T20 results has been a key focus of Malan's since he took over as head coach at the start of the year.

"They were very honest, there was huge disappointment about the way they played [at last year's World Cup] and ultimately the way they performed," he said.

"Also they were really real around the fact that T20 was the work in progress piece. They played some nice one-day cricket for a period of time, and making sure we're trying to upgrade our game towards the T20 side of things had taken a huge effort for us throughout the summer.

"It wasn't necessarily me coming in and saying 'hey, we've got to play this brand of cricket', they already knew what they wanted that to look like.

"My job since they came in was to make it a little bit clearer and have a little bit more of a collaborative approach around how we were looking to try and set that up.

"It wasn't a fluke that our batters have played the way they've played over the summer. They've spoken about how they wanted to do that, they just weren't sure what that looked like."