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Cricket Ireland have been nominated for two awards at the inaugural Irish Sports Industry Awards to be held later this week.
After an extremely busy year for cricket in Ireland, the organisation has been recognised by the judging panel for excellence in both their creative and innovative use of social media and for hosting one of the biggest international events in Ireland during the year.

The ICC World T20 Qualifiers, held in four different venues across Ireland has been nominated in the Best International Sports Event category. The qualifiers took place during the month of July and saw teams from five different continents take part in group stages and then a knockout phase to identify six teams to qualify for the 2016 ICC World T20 tournament.

Whilst four grounds, Bready, Stormont, Clontarf and Malahide were used as match venues, many more were used as training venues helping to spread the tournament around the cricketing community with fans in Belfast, Derry and Dublin all getting the chance to see high quality international cricket.

Hosts Ireland qualified from the event, with Scotland and Netherlands ending the tournament as joint winners after rain affected the final, held in Malahide. The tournament was broadcast live on Sky Sports and globally through Star Sports, with around 150 million people tuning in to the tournament globally.

The Best Use of Social Media category also sees Cricket Ireland nominated after a hugely successful year that has seen their social reach online surpass both the FAI and GAA, leaving them second behind only rugby in terms of sports in Ireland.

The nomination relates to the use of the #BackingGreen hashtag during the ICC Cricket World Cup earlier in the year, which was introduced as content and creativity was stepped up before the tournament.

Throughout the World Cup social media was used around the clock to keep fans around the world up to date with what was happening with the squad and during matches with the #BackingGreen hastag being spread around and used by both cricket fans and first time viewers as the whole nation got behind the team and supported them through the World Cup.

Since then social media has continued to grow for Cricket Ireland, with new developments such as periscope being used, as well as snapchat and vine to help create a larger audience for cricket in Ireland. As a result the numbers of people directly following Cricket Ireland have more than doubled this year, with numbers fast approaching half a million.

The winners will be announced at a small awards dinner in Dublin on Thursday, at which representatives of Cricket Ireland will be present.

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