Firstly, I would like to congratulate all League and Cup winners this year, especially YMCA on their Senior double and Clontarf on their double league win!
Division 1: YMCA
Senior Cup: YMCA
Division 2: Clontarf
Junior Cup: Pembroke
Division 3: Clontarf
Minor Cup: Leinster
For the first time, both Divisions 2 and 3 included semi-finals and finals to decide the league winners. The trophies and medals for all divisions will, as before, be presented at the Annual Awards Dinner in Old Belvedere on Friday 5th November.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank my fellow committee members, Mary Sharp, Cathy Murphy, Amanda Dunlop, Ciara Metcalfe and Naomi Scott-Hayward for their commitment to women’s cricket in Leinster and to our committee this season. The committee was made up of 6 members, all of whom have full time jobs meaning all work on women’s cricket was done on a voluntary basis after work, regularly into the early hours! This included general organising of the league and cup structures, Division 1 fixtures, liaising with the umpire’s association, writing regulations, reviewing starrings, manually checking all details in Sportstats for every match played, reporting to the executive as well as dealing with the general adhoc queries and requests which come in daily.
The support of the Umpire’s and Scorers Association is as always, invaluable. The standard of the women’s game is improving and having official umpires at all Division 1 matches increases the professionalism and we would be lost without them. The advice on the regulations at the beginning of the season was also much appreciated.
It would be remiss of me not to also mention Philip Smith in this report as his support of the Women’s section has been outstanding. He was instrumental in securing sponsorship from Kidd Insurance for the Women’s competitions as well as orchestrating the live streaming of the Senior Cup final. For me personally, he was a constant source of advice and sound reasoning.
On behalf of the committee, I would like to thank everyone for their patience this season. At last year’s AGM we agreed new structures and made a lot of changes as we continued to strive to keep moving forward, develop our players and stay relevant. This year, the reintroduction of 50over cricket has been a great success and we hope the weather is more favourable next year to build on this start! As with anything new, many lessons have been learnt. We are currently evaluating the past season to understand where we can tweak things to make next season better. We have been attending women’s cricket focus groups, facilitated by Philip Smith, and many great discussions have taken place between people from all divisions and many clubs.
The Women’s Autumn AGM is scheduled for 14th November 2017(tbc), where we will be sharing our initial plans for next season. We will also be looking for nominations for people to join the committee, in addition to Stephanie Woods who was co-opted onto the committee this week.
Looking forward to seeing you all at the awards dinner and the AGM,
Hannah de Burgh Whyte
Chairperson, Cricket Leinster Women’s Cricket Committee