Isobel Joyce blamed a "sloppy" fielding and bowling display as Ireland opened their World T20 campaign with a disappointing 93-run defeat by New Zealand in Mohali, India.

"As a team we let ourselves down in the field," said skipper Joyce after seeing her top score of 28 prove woefully inadequate as the Girls in Green struggled to 84-5 in reply to a dominant 177-3 from one of the tournament favourites.

"We pride ourselves on our fielding but we were sloppy. Our angles were wrong, we weren't in the right place at the right time, to cut the ball off. There were too many misfields, especially towards the end of the innings when heads had dropped. That's not good enough at a World Cup.

"We bowled poorly to our fields and didn't do ourselves any favours in the first six overs. The bowlers didn't hit the lines or length that we had planned to. You're going to get hit for lots of runs against a good team when you do that."

Ireland have a chance to bounce back tomorrow against Sri Lanka - the team Aaron Hamilton's side will have targeted for a potential giantkilling - before taking on South Africa and Australia in their final two Group A matches.