Ireland bounced back to winning ways yesterday with a four wickets victory in their final one-day game against MCC at Shenley.

Although the top order batting again failed to produce the goods, the bowlers came good on a wearing wicket and restricted MCC to 167 for nine in their 50 overs with Matt Dwyer leading the way with 10 overs for 13 runs.

Admittedly Mark Richardson and John Bean, who had scored more than 300 runs between them in the first two games, were demoted to number 10 and 12th man respectively but there was nothing else second rate about this MCC opposition.

The match winning partnership was 54 for the sixth wicket between Decker Curry and Andrew Patterson. Curry, after two failures at the top of the order, was dropped down to number six and Patterson, who will be have to be satisfied with the number seven berth in Canada ultimately took apart the three MCC big guns.

Curry was unbeaten on 57 from 71 balls with six fours and Patterson was even quicker, with 26 from 35 balls with four boundaries.