News

36 players from Leinster, the NCU and the North West gathered at YMCA Dublin last week for two days of coaching and games as part of the first ever U17 Girls National Camp and T20 competition.
36 players from Leinster, the NCU and the North West gathered at YMCA CC in Dublin for 2 days of coaching and games.
On arrival at the ground the players were split into three inter-union teams and quickly got stuck into a mornings training and team bonding sessions ahead of the first T20 match on Tuesday afternoon.

Day Two saw a further two games played with the ‘Bulls’, captained by Irish international Elena Ticel running out winners of the triangular tournament. Speaking after the games, Elena spoke to www.cricketireland.ie: “It was great to play with girls from the NCU and North West who we haven’t had a chance to play with before, it definitely added to the enjoyment of the two days.”

Those were sentiments echoed by Naomi Matthews of Donaghcloney Cricket Club and Waringstown Women, who said: “Its really exciting for the girls to travel down to Dublin and play with so many other girls who are passionate about cricket.”

Nigel Pyne, Ireland U17 Girls and EPP Coach, was impressed by the the standard of cricket on show over the course of the two days. He told www.cricketireland.ie: “We spoke to the girls about playing positive cricket and the importance of playing with confidence and enjoyment both with the bat and in the field. Over the three games there were 1002 runs scored, that’s an average of 167 runs per innings at a rate of over 8 per over. In the field there were 8 run outs over the 3 games with two of them direct hits, the standard of fielding in general was very very high. The players deserve lots of praise for responding so well to what was asked of them.”

Ireland Women’s National Coach Trent Johnston commented afterwards: “Its really encouraging to such depth of talent in the girls game – the two days have been great for them and I hope its an event that Cricket Ireland look to build on and grow, if this could happen two or even three times a summer it would be fantastic for the development of the players themselves and the girls’ game in Ireland.”

The U17 Girls team traveled to Scotland this week to play four T20 matches against their Celtic counterparts at Loreto School. Ireland lost out by nine wickets in the opening encounter on Monday, but made amends the following day with a six wicket win and four wicket win in their two games on Tuesday. Heavy overnight rain left the ground unplayable for Wednesday’s final encounter.