Saqib Ali, UAE captain was clealry proud of his magnificent innings of 195, albeit in a losing cause, "It was the best innings I have played in my career. It was a pressure innings against a top Associate team. I think the key was the positive approach which I adopted and probably my shot selection was better than most of my team-mates."

"The only target I had in my mind when I resumed today was to bat as long as possible because I knew if I batted for two sessions or more, I would not only be able to get a big century but might also get my team out of jail."

"Zahid (Shah) gave me excellent support and showed that if we had batted more sensibly and cautiously, we would have managed a respectable draw."

However, Ali said he can draw a lot of positives out of this defeat. "The biggest positive is that we fought till the end and gave Ireland a run for their money. We are an inexperienced side and surely we are going to benefit a lot from the experience of this match."

"I have the highest respect for the Ireland team and I wish it all the very best in its three ODIs against Bangladesh and the rest of the tournament," Ali said.

Stand-in Ireland skipper William Porterfield spoke of his pride in leading his country onto the field for the first time at Senior level, "It was a very proud moment for me stepping over the line with the team this morning. It's always been an aspiration of mine to captain Ireland, and it's come true."

"We went out this morning hoping to wrap things up in the first session, but it proved to be that bit tougher than we perhaps expected. Their captain Saqib batted really well and made things difficult for us. We stuck to our task and dug in, and eventually got our rewards."

"I didn't bowl Greg much in the morning session because I thought Kyle was the better option from one end , with the seamers operating in tandem from the other. We also had taken the new ball in the later part of the morning and I thought the bounce would have been more variable than it was. Trent got a wicket yesterday with one that crept along the deck, and I reckoned it would only be a matter of time if we bowled stump to stump that it happened again."

"Thankfully when Greg (Thompson) came on, he did the business and got us two wickets in two balls. Dave Langford-Smith has an ankle strain and I held him back until really necessary. He gave us a quick burst after lunch, but unfortunately didn't get a wicket despite bowling well."

"We always knew once we got one the second and third would follow, but we didn't expect to get two in two balls. We knew if we kept pegging away that we'd get there. To get 20 wickets on this great track is a fine testimony to our attack."

On his unbeaten 40 from 54 balls which saw his team safely home, "I've been hitting the ball in the nets really well and it's good to carry that into the middle. I wanted to be there at the end and it worked out well."