(Cricket news) In the latest episode of the The Green Ball Show – the Irish cricket podcast – former Ireland Men’s International captain Alan Lewis assessed Ireland Women’s prospects at the ICC Women’s T20 World Cup, while Ireland Men’s head coach Heinrich Malan spoke about the ‘five squads’ that were released last week for the upcoming tours to Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. In addition, Team Operations Manager Beth Healy gives insights inti her role, including what happened when Ireland had to be evacuated from Zimbabwe during the Omnicron outbreak in 2021.
Excerpts from Alan Lewis interview
Talking about Ireland’s prospects: “The hardest thing this team did was they qualified for the World Cup. I thought there were much more positives than negatives [from the losses] because that’s in a sense [the style of play is] where Ireland are trying to go. The overall opinion would be they fought hard. Cara Murray – that’s the best I’ve seen her bowl for Ireland I would say, got her three wickets for 15 [against England]. She has a different trajectory on the ball, she bowled at a steady flat pace, got turn and you know England obviously looked to attack her and she did really well I thought. Her fielding was generally very good, some excellent catches, but it was just such a disappointing, in a sense fall from grace and I know they feel that themselves.
“Obviously the starts were very positive, Ireland have elected to play this type of plan. They went very much at England particularly early on and it was fantastic. Both Amy and Gaby have settled in a very understanding partnership, they know each other’s game very well and they run very well between the wickets that.
“But I’m far happier looking from the outside of how they’re trying to play, because you know in yesteryear we would have fiddled and poked around. Obviously if you look at it in the circumstances, maybe had Gaby said to herself – well look I’m just going to settle in here, there’s 48 balls left, if I faced 24 of those I might be 60 or 70 not out and create a base for the team to maybe get 130-140. It looks to me on the grounds that we’re playing at, that’s the par score because there’s turn on a lot of the wickets. It’s so hot here the wickets are dry, there’s not a huge amount of pace in them and you know what if you get 140-150 you will really challenge.”
Talking about Mary Waldron becoming Ireland Women’s most capped player: “Absolutely wonderful. And Mary has been totally committed over that period of time. She’s a great galvaniser amongst the girls as well, I think the one thing, if you look at it, there’s 12 of that team that are under the age of 22. And, I don’t want to make this sound bad, but she’s a ‘motherly figure’ to them. She’s very much in touch with their humour and how they operate, and they’re a very happy bunch. They’re always looking at the next best thing.”
Talking about how Ireland will look to play Test cricket: “A big part of our preparation at the moment is working towards that understanding of how we want to operate and what does it look like and how people get an individual understanding of the way we want to try and play as a team and as a unit. Since I took this role, there was one of the key things around the short formats that we were trying to be really clear about and it’s mainly different than red ball cricket. The cool piece around it all is that it’s blank canvas. You know, we’ve got a bit of work to do in that space, but it’s an exciting opportunity and it’s an exciting space for us to work in and look Bazball or whatever ball is, is the key phrase at the moment. We are not necessarily going to try and play like anyone else. I think that’s the challenge and that’s the key messaging that we have with an environment at the moment is, we want our players to go out there and figure out what it is like playing red ball cricket.
“I guess if you look at the players we have, we’ve got players that are playing a white ball brand that is that exciting, aggressive sort of style where we’ve got to try and find that balance within our, our red ball space too. We’ve got people who’ve played test cricket before, even though they haven’t done it lately, and that’s the exciting piece. It’s using all of that information again from a squad perspective and making sure that people get clarity around how we want them to go about their business and have an impact in the game.
“I think one of the most important pieces in that space is when you speak to our young players. When you speak to players like Harry Tector and Josh Little, they want to play Test Cricket. How that fits in over the next 12 months is still what we’re trying to balance, but I think as long as we can keep that fire burning within the young lads that it’s test cricket that’s the pinnacle, we’re on the right track.”
Talking about the inclusion of Craig Young and Conor Olphert in the white ball squads:“Yeah, Youngy’s started bowling, even though it’s at a very low level at this stage. and I guess this is just part of that management plan. Look, when you think about pinnacle events over the next couple of months, we’ve got Bangladesh obviously over in Chelmsford, so I guess at this point in time, working back from there and trying to get a full squad available for selection of which Youngy plays a huge part. He hasn’t played a lot throughout the last sort of six months, but it’s all part of working him back into being available fully fit, and able to be in a squad of 13 or 14 when we try to put that squad together.
“Conor Olphert’s in there as well. And again, like for Conor, it’s just working back towards how we get him fully fit. He brings a point of difference and I think that’s the exciting part that we are looking for, and building our squad and getting a binding unit together that compliments each other is about having a point of difference. Craig Young brings a point of difference, Conor brings a point of difference, and hopefully in time we can keep finding guys who can bowl 150mph. If we can have a couple of those lads jump out of the woods, that’d be awesome.”
Also read: Shafali, Richa are not traditional batters; they like to play short balls: Harmanpreet
