ICC Cricket World Cup 2011 Group B, Kolkata:
Ireland 307-4 (47.4 overs) bt Netherlands 306 (50 ovs) by six wickets
Match scorecard

Highlights - Ireland sign off with high-scoring win

Paul Stirling hit a century off 70 balls as Ireland bowed out of the World Cup with a stirring six-wicket victory over Netherlands in Kolkata.

Set 307 to win, Stirling (101) and William Porterfield (68) produced an opening stand of 177 from 162 balls.

Niall O'Brien (57 not out) helped wrap up the third highest run chase in World Cup history in the 48th over.

Earlier, Ryan ten Doeschate made 106 as Netherlands posted 306 all out, with four run outs off the last four balls.

Both sides went into the game knowing they could no longer qualify for the quarter-finals from Group B, with Ireland's victory over England the only other win by either side in the competition.

But the match will be remembered as the day when 20-year-old Stirling announced himself on the world stage with a scintillating innings featuring 14 fours and two sixes.

He and captain Porterfield raced to 81-0 in the mandatory 10-over powerplay as Stirling reached his fifty off 25 balls.

Porterfield, who faced 93 balls, did not bat as fluently as his opening partner and had been dropped twice before he was caught behind off Tom Cooper.

Ten Doeschate ended the tournament with 307 runs at an average of 61

Stirling was out in the next over two balls after bringing up his hundred, giving the Netherlands a glimmer of hope.

"He hasn't had the best of runs so far in the tournament and to come out and play the way he did - get a hundred in the fashion that he did - shows a lot of character in the lad and I'm happy for him," Porterfield said afterwards.

Ed Joyce and Niall O'Brien put on a quick 54 and Gary Wilson kept up the momentum with 27 from 21 balls.

It was left to Kevin O'Brien, Ireland's centurion against England, to finish things off with two sixes off Pieter Seelaar.

The Netherlands' innings was built on a 121-partnership between Ten Doeschate and his captain Peter Borren after Ireland had reduced the Dutch to 113-4, with Stirling taking two wickets.

Ten Doeschate's 108-ball innings included 13 fours and a six, moving him alongside South Africa's AB de Villiers and Sachin Tendulkar of India as the only players to score two hundreds at the tournament.

The innings ended in comical fashion as Atse Buurman, Mudassar Bukhari, Seelaar and Adeel Raja were run out off successive balls at the end of the 50th over.

Dutch suffer four run-outs in four balls

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