{"id":610946,"date":"2026-09-01T07:06:10","date_gmt":"2026-09-01T07:06:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/610946\/"},"modified":"2026-09-01T07:06:10","modified_gmt":"2026-09-01T07:06:10","slug":"lewis-ireland-ready-for-england","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/610946\/","title":{"rendered":"Lewis: Ireland ready for England"},"content":{"rendered":"

As we wave a tearful goodbye to as breathtaking a summer as these islands have seen in many a year, the return of ‘the rain’ is hardly ideal for Ireland’s women cricketers ahead of their One Day International triple-header against England this week – not that you’ll hear a word of complaint from Irish captain Gaby Lewis.<\/p>\n

Ireland’s three-match tour of England gets underway tomorrow with the first of three ODIs against our old neighbours taking place in Leicester before game two on Thursday in Derby and finally Sunday’s third tie which takes place in Worcester.<\/p>\n

A similar triple-header against the West Indies in July took place in Magheramason’s sun-baked Bready Cricket Club – conditions this week in England are likely to be a little bit more, well, ‘Irish’.<\/p>\n

Earlier this summer, Ireland’s narrow T20 victory over West Indies<\/a> was indeed interrupted by a predictably wet June in Dublin.<\/p>\n

The squad’s final warm-up game was cancelled last Saturday as the wet weather returned with a vengeance but Lewis and her team-mates are no strangers to the challenges of any outdoor pursuit on this exposed little rock in the Atlantic Ocean which we call home.<\/p>\n

“It’s an obvious one to think about, but, you can only control what you can control, and the weather is something we unfortunately can’t control,” Lewis told RT\u00c9 Sport.<\/p>\n

“We were due to have a warm-up game against an England development side on Saturday, and that was called off. We got a hit indoors, and we’ve just tried to do as much as we can.<\/p>\n

“We’re not going to be changing massive game plans in these games. So it’s just back to our preparation before that and control the things that we do have control of… we’ve done that to the best of our ability.”<\/p>\n

\"BRISTOL,
\nRebecca Stokell and Louise Little of Ireland celebrate June’s T20 victory over West Indies<\/p>\n

Apart from the obvious issues wet weather can cause on match day – cricket being a fast-ground game, after all – the inclement conditions over the weekend even disrupted some players’ commute to the UK for the series itself.<\/p>\n

“Apart from that [warm-up] game it’s gone good. We got a good training in the day before and got a good run around,” Lewis explained.<\/p>\n

“We actually had some travel issues on the way over for those traveling from Dublin, which was disrupted by the storm. But look, everyone got here safely and we managed to get a good training session on Friday, and we have another one today ahead of tomorrow.<\/p>\n

“We’ve put in some great training back home. It’s not too alien conditions to Ireland and something that we’re definitely used to.”<\/p>\n

The nature of the one-day series makes Lloyd Tennant’s side’s preparation somewhat simple – three games in six days against ostensibly the same outfit at least narrows the focus ahead of of the opening tie.<\/p>\n

But a top-class England side – albeit one that has rested several big names – will provide different challenges from one game to the next, according to skipper Lewis.<\/p>\n

“It makes it easier with analysis and stuff. You go to qualifying competitions and you’re trying to cram in six teams analysis in Dublin and at the same time focus on what you can do,” she said.<\/p>\n

“Plans can change for different batters, bowlers etc, but we get those those plans set in early, and it’s just then adapting as the games go on.<\/p>\n

“You might have a particular plan that might not work, and then you have to adjust it from game one to game two.<\/p>\n

“It does make it a bit easier not having too many oppositions – but in saying that, the teams do change and 11s change, so you do have that mix coming in as well.<\/p>\n

“When you get to the venue, just take it all in, assess the conditions and things like that to what you’re going to be be taking on.”<\/p>\n

The home series against West Indies didn’t go the way of the Girls in Green<\/a> with the visitors easing to a 3-0 series win, but Lewis feels her side learned a lot from their battle with one of cricket’s blue-blood countries and noted that Ireland had not helped their own cause much with a poor week on the batting front.<\/p>\n

\"BRISTOL,
\nLewis in action against the Windies<\/p>\n

“If you look at our wickets, it was most often us getting ourselves out [rather] than them getting us out,” she remarked.<\/p>\n

“That’s something that we’ll look to rectify this series. Fifty overs is just about building partnerships, and I think we did that to an extent, but then it’s just about pushing on and being selfish on that. In those partnerships that, take that responsibility to push on the game.<\/p>\n

“That is the mental side of things with going from 20 overs to 50 overs is can you do the basic skills for longer periods. It’s definitely something we’ve spoken about and something we’ll look to rectify.”<\/p>\n

The aforementioned youthful side named by England boss Charlotte Edwards still provides a formidable challenge to the travelling Irish side.<\/p>\n

Lancashire-based Lewis and her team-mate Orla Prendergast of Welsh Fire will recognise many familiar faces on the opposite side of the ball from their day-jobs on the British club scene.<\/p>\n

“They’re resting a number of players, but they do have some, some high-quality players coming in as well.,” Lewis said.<\/p>\n

“It’s a benefit that myself and Orla are playing over in England as well. We play against those girls for our counties as well, which can help.<\/p>\n

“We’ve watched them play, we’ve got good prep done. We’ve got good analysis done on them, so we’ve got our plans in place.”<\/p>\n

England v Ireland ODI schedule<\/p>\n

Match 1: Tuesday 1 September, 1.0pm, Grace Road, Leicester<\/p>\n

Match 2: Thursday 3 September, 1.0pm, County Ground, Derby<\/p>\n

Match 3: Sunday 6 September, 10.30am, New Road, Worcester<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As we wave a tearful goodbye to as breathtaking a summer as these islands have seen in many…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":610947,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":["post-610946","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/610946","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=610946"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/610946\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/610947"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=610946"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=610946"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=610946"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}