News

Ireland Women’s winter training squad have been announced for 2012/13. There have been three squads announced in total with the senior squad of fifteen being accompanied by a Performance Squad and an Emerging Players Squad.
Following one of the most successful seasons ever, the Ireland senior women’s team achieved most of their goals for 2012 including promotion to the ECB County Championship Division 2 having won Division 3; ECB Division 3 T20 Cup winners; European T20 Championship winners; two very competitive T20 games against England and India; and a relatively successful tri series against Pakistan and Bangladesh. This included a fantastic win against Bangladesh, a washout against Bangladesh where they were well on their way to another comprehensive victory, and pushing Pakistan very hard with Duckworth Lewis being a major factor in their defeat to Pakistan in the one day international format. The T20 tri-series saw them lose on the last ball to Bangladesh and were comprehensively beaten by Pakistan in their final fixture.

There were some outstanding performers throughout the year in the different competitions and formats. A big emphasis was put on the squad players to perform at club level and it was great to see consistent performances from Kim Garth, Laura Delany, Clare Shillington and Melissa Scott-Hayward of particular note.

Isobel Joyce consistently performed in the ECB county championship and Melissa Scott-Hayward in the ECB T20 Cup was outstanding. Clare Shillington throughout the whole campaign was the stand out batter, not to mention Kim Garth (with both bat and ball) and Louise McCarthy who are both making big strides to becoming outstanding cricketers.

The 2013 winter squad has now been selected and the Selectors have divided players into 3 distinct groups: Senior, Performance and Emerging Player squads. Emphasis will be very much player-centric, revolving around the tactical, technical, mental, physical and lifestyle areas of each individual player.

In the New Year, more focus will be placed on playing spin bowling where again in 2012, although there were small improvements, it was still very much a weak area of their play. Specialist bowling, batting, and fielding sessions with specialist coaches will be part of the Winter training programme.

The 2013 summer programme is looking to be even busier than 2012, which will see a packed fixture list of ECB county championships division 2 (both 50 over and T20 competitions), the ICC Women’s World T20 global qualifiers, the ICC European World Cup qualifier Championships, a potential number of ODI’s and T20I’s, the usual club cricket and the Super 3’s domestic competition.

With even more improvements made, they expect to have an even more successful summer in 2013, especially with the possibility of a spot at the ICC World T20 in Bangladesh in 2014.

Senior Squad (15)
Emma Beamish
Laura Cullen
Laura Delany
Emma Flanagan
Kim Garth
Cecelia Joyce
Isobel Joyce
Shauna Kavanagh
Louise McCarthy
Eimear Richardson
Rebecca Rolfe
Melissa Scott-Hayward
Clare Shillington
Elena Tice
Mary Waldron

Performance Squad (11)
Laura Boylan
Rebecca Brannagan
Clodagh Conway
Niamh Conway
Jennifer Gray
Hannah Grieve
Amy Kenealy
Aoife McDonnell
Kate McKenna
Hannah Ridgeway
Alison Smith

Emerging Players (9)

Blaithnaid Breslin
Pia Diepman
Lauren Hoey
Robyn Lewis
Hannah McKay
Ruby Neville
Lucy O’Reilly
Rhiannon Pope
Una Raymond-Hoey

Cricket Ireland
A big winter awaits Ireland Women
Yes