Ireland opener Paul Stirling said that his childhood and batting technique growing up was influenced by Indian batter Virender Sehwag and Australian Damien Martyn, two very different players in terms of technique.
"I probably had two batsmen that I loved watching, one was Damien Martyn, he was nice to look up (to), pleasant on the eye, aesthetically pleasing, someone I can never emulate,” Stirling said in a video chat with ICC ahead of the T20 World Cup first round where Ireland will be playing alongside Sri Lanka, Netherlands and Namibia to qualify to the second round.
Talking about another batsman that he watched growing up and was able to emulate as well in terms of his playing style, the 31-year-old said, “Virender Sehwag, the other one I watched. (I) loved his play through the off-side (and) tried to copy a lot of his stuff, not very well be it, but (I) loved watching that two bat.”
Stirling, who has now represented Ireland in more than 300 games, (213 international) said that his cricketing journey started with falling in love with the game at an early age and then he went on to watch red-ball cricket as much as he could.
“Cricket was mainly the one that I probably fell in love with the most from the earliest age from about five (years old). I used to watch Test cricket at home, which was not really the normal thing to do in Belfast as a 10-year-old," he said.
Stirling, who has been playing in various tournaments around the world, is one of the top performers in limited-overs and has so far scored more than 7000 runs in 216 innings in the white-ball formats.