Important Week In Store For Ireland's Women's Cricketers In T20 World Cup Quest

Monday, 23 August 2021 14:11

The European parthway event takes place in La Manga.

Ireland’s Women’s cricket team are gearing up for an important week as they look to advance through the European section of the T20 World Cup Qualifiers.

Their road to the World Cup starts with the returning International Cricket Council (ICC) pathway event, the ICC Women’s T20 World Cup Europe Qualifier. The event is two steps away from the T20 World Cup itself and is being held as a six team round robin tournament with only the top team advancing to the World Cup qualifiers next year.

The European pathway event is being hosted at La Manga in Spain and will see Ireland’s Women face off against Scotland, Turkey, France, Germany and The Netherlands. Ireland will enter as the favourites being the highest ranked team in the tournament, currently sitting tenth in the ICC Women’s T20 rankings and having beaten both Scotland (3-1) and The Netherlands (2-1) in home series wins this summer.

There will be some fresh opposition for them as both Turkey and France enter an ICC for the first time and will enter as relative unknowns. The events starts on Thursday August 26th and Ireland have been dealt a tough start to the tournament with a double header on the opening day facing Germany at 9:30am before a quick turnaround to face Turkey at 2:30pm.

They will then face Scotland the following day, France on the 29th and wrap up their fixture list against The Netherlands on the 30th.

In a statement on the sides website Ireland’s head coach Ed Joyce was confident but aware of the challenges of this sort of tournament.

“With only one side going through from here, it will be a challenging week - but what’s definitely pleasing for me is that I was confident no matter which 14 players were selected, will be taking a talented, eager and hungry group to Spain that are capable of competing on all fronts.”

There is a number of familiar faces in the squad including captain Laura Delany, who recently broke Isobel Joyce’s record for most games captained for Ireland and Gaby Lewis who made her début in The Hundred franchise tournament for the Southern Brave on August 16th

The ICC will be streaming all of the games from the tournament making them available globally via their website.

Ireland Squad: Laura Delany (capt), Ava Canning, Georgina Dempsey, Shauna Kavanagh, Gaby Lewis,
Louise Little, Sophie MacMahon, Lara Maritz, Cara Murray, Leah Paul, Orla Prendergast, Eimear
Richardson, Rebecca Stokell, Mary Waldron