England 166 for 4 (Boucher 45, Gibson 36*, Kemp 29*) won Ireland 165 (Hunter 64, Wong 5-33, Villiers 2-21, Curtin Coleman 2-32) with six wickets.
Hunter, one of three players to score fifties as the visitors asked England to stage their highest successful ODI chase in the opener at Leicester, dug in with Leah Ball in a 57-run partnership off 83 balls after a steady stream of wickets got Ireland 83 for 4 before the halfway stage of the innings at Derby.
Alice Tector was run out in the second over of the match with a pick-and-roll from Dunkley at mid-on and Wong removed skipper Gaby Lewis cheaply with an excellent ball that bounced back to beat a drive, sliding between bat and pad to rattle leg stump.
Villiers entered the attack in the 22nd over to take effect immediately with one wicket when Prendergast launched a slog sweep to Kemp at deep mid-wicket. Villiers struck again in the next over with a fly ball that drifted wide late on when a Stokell drive found Gibson at extra cover.
Villiers should have had three in four overs when Hunter, 27, drilled the ball back at the bowler but Villiers was at fault after her follow-up, delaying her dive to the right by a fraction of a second, long enough to delay Hunter.
Hunter struggled to put the ball away, accumulating her innings almost exclusively in singles until finally, after withstanding a hopeful review for lbw from Ryana MacDonald-Gay, she drove the next ball through cover for the second of four fours.
Hunter helped herself to another boundary, over midwicket in the next MacDonald Gay area to move to the cusp of a grueling half-century and reached the mark with a single off the 79th ball she faced, the slowest of her 11 ODI fifties.
Wong came back to break up the Hunter-Paul stand, bowling Paul across the inside edge onto her off-stump, and then resulting in the wicket of Louise Little, who was dropped by new keeper Alice Capsey two balls before throwing one down the middle.
When Wong caught Kara Murray at mid-wicket, she went past her international career best and Hunter’s wicket was the prize that gave her five for, and Villiers ran to deep mid-wicket to take a powerful catch as Hunter tried to take the lead. Tilly Curtin-Coleman picked up two 10-year-olds to clean the tail.
England’s chase started brightly enough. Boshier and Dunkley looked set to repeat their match-winning stand from the first game as they raced to 54 off 43 balls, in a display of power hitting that included a powerful six from Prendergast at long off off Dunkley.
But then Boshier cooked her opening partner in a shocking run-out, delivering McCartney’s Kia straight to Prendergast at the cover but running anyway leaving Dunkley with little hope of achieving her goal.
Bouchier then picked up short backward square leg off a poor delivery from McCartney, who then dispatched Capsi cheaply with one that turned sharply on the outside of off stump and pinned the pad as the batter jumped back.
Jodie Grewcock, playing her fourth cap for England, started at first but was unable to convert, leaving the more experienced duo of Kemp and Gibson to flail for the required innings. Both powerful players, they did what they needed to on this occasion, while still managing three balls between them, including two in three balls down the ground for Gibson, sealing the win.
Valkyrie Baines is women’s cricket editor at large at Cricinfo
