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She’s already Ireland’s most capped player and on Tuesday Clare Shillington will jet off to India to take part in her fifth ICC World Tournament confident that Ireland can mix it with the world’s best.

Having made her debut against South Africa in 1997, Shillington has amassed a mammoth 143 caps for Ireland in a glittering career that has seen her score 2,551 runs with a top score of 114*.

It wasn’t long before Shillington got her first taste of tournament cricket when she was named in the Ireland side to take part in the 1997 ICC Women’s World Cup in India. In just her second game in the green shamrock, Shillington lined out against Denmark and played four of Ireland’s matches in the tournament.

That experience will be vital to the Ireland cause, as the Girls in Green go in search of a major scalp, “I’ve probably got the most experience going into the tournament; I’ve played a World Cup in India as well, so it’s a bit of an advantage although it was quite a long time ago – I’m not sure I remember all of it!”

The Ireland team has a very balanced look to it, with experienced players like Shillington, the Joyce sisters and Mary Waldron joined by some newer faces to the squad.

Shillington had some sound advice for the players setting out on their first ICC world tournament journey, “Just enjoy it; just soak it all up. It’ll be something they’ve never experienced before. It will be even more different from Bangladesh (where Ireland played in the 2014 edition) from how I remember it in India.

“We’re obviously going to be playing against some very good teams, and just to learn from them.”

Throughout her time in the Ireland set-up, Shillington has seek a real change in how the game is approached at an international level, “Things have obviously moved on massively from when I went to India, that’s a long time ago 1997.

“We’ve obviously become a lot more professional in the setup. The fitness regimes, our nutrition, our management of the whole squad has upped a huge level and it needs to be to match up to the teams that we’re going to be playing against.”

This tournament presents Aaron Hamilton’s charges with a real opportunity to carry the momentum from the qualifiers in Thailand last year into this tournament, and Shillington believes Ireland can pull off some victories in Group A where they come up against New Zealand, Australia, South Africa and Sri Lanka.

“It’s going to be a big task to get out of our group, but a win up first against New Zealand and anything can happen,” she continued. “As I said it is a big ask, but on any given day we have match winners in every discipline in our squad and if we can pull it together and pull off something special early who knows what could happen.”

The squad have been working hard at the indoor centre at North County and are looking forward to hitting the ground running in India, “We came back from Bangkok in early December and we had a bit of time off and we’ve been kicking on since January so it’s a nice short sort of run-in. I think we’re about ready to get out of indoors and head to Bangalore for our camp.

“We just need to acclimatise quickly, I’m sure we’ll get into some nice running out in the heat which will be not very pleasant! But, you know just acclimatising as early as we can and getting used to those wickets; I believe we’ve got some local net bowlers who will turn it square.

“We’ve a long build-up of ten days and then warm-ups so we should have plenty of time to prepare for the first game.”

That tournament in Thailand saw unprecedented levels of support for the Ireland team culminating with them being nominated for RTÉ Team of the Year. Shillington is hoping for mare of the same: “It’s absolutely fantastic. It moved up to a different level the support we got when we went to Thailand for the qualifiers. It makes a huge difference to the team just to know that people are watching.

“They’re always supporting, but just to know that they’re really following you, backing you all the way it makes such a big difference and hopefully we’ll go even more in India.”

You can follow Ireland’s ICC World T20 campaign on www.cricketireland.ie and by following Cricket Ireland on Twitter @Irelandcricket, Facebook & Instagram.


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