Guernsey Women off to Austria in search of T20I ICC Ranking

The Guernsey Women’s Squad head off to Vienna, Austria 26th – 29th August to take on their hosts in four T20Is. These matches along with those played over the past three years will allow the Guernsey Women to attain an ICC T20I ranking for the first time.

The Squad will be led by Krista De La Mare and is;

                        Krista De La Mare (C)

Eva Bourgaize                                    Liz Willcocks

Fran Bulpitt                                         Molly Robinson

Alice Davis                                         Charlotte Milner

Marianne Le Ray                               Elise Millington

Hannah Eulenkamp                           Emily Merrien

Rebecca Hubbard                             Claire Jennings

The squad will be coached by Ben Ferbrache and Lee Forshaw, who have overseen a busy year for the Women and are looking forward to this new challenge. Ben said, “This will be our first time away in Europe coming up against new opposition, which is really exciting, that we can obtain a T20I ranking as well will be brilliant and provide a stepping stone for this group to move onwards and upwards from.”.

Captain Krista added, “We're really excited to head over to Austria next week for our first international series, which is a big step for us. The team have trained really hard over the last few months working on areas we identified for improvement during the matches Vs Jersey and the RAF earlier this year. We're hoping all the hard work has paid off and if we play like we can I'm confident we'll be able to get some good results. Our goal this season was to achieve our first world ranking so if we can do this in Austria with some wins it'll be an amazing way to end the season.

The Women’s Squad are sponsored by Gower and have a new travel partner in Specsavers who have kindly provided travel bags for the trip.”

Whilst the present looks good with the Women’s Squad, the Gower Girl’s Programme looking to develop the next generation of cricketers is also going from strength to strength. In the past weeks up to 20 girls have made up the Under 10 - 13 Squad and have been training with Hannah Eulenkamp, Guernsey Cricket Women & Girls Development Officer.  Hannah spoke about the success of the new group and the growth in girls cricket this year;

"Women and Girls' Cricket is developing rapidly around the world and Guernsey Cricket is doing its bit to inspire the next generation of International cricketers! The number of girls playing cricket this year has significantly increased thanks to the many opportunities they have had to take up the sport and take part in cricket activities. We have seen around 20 girls weekly, aged between 10 and 13, regularly taking part in cricket sessions and matches this summer. We have also held a girls' only camp this summer, a Talent ID camp, and girls also attended our annual summer camp that has traditionally been filled with just boys. Many of them had their first flavour of cricket in school at clubs, in lessons, and through festivals as well as the Youth Games. The future is very promising, and next year we will be looking to get the girls off Island to play against and with, other girls of their age. Due to the success of this area of the programme, Guernsey Cricket will open their sessions to girls in Years 3 and 4 this winter and with the introduction of Women's Development Cricket, there will be opportunities to play cricket across all ages for girls."