{"id":397936,"date":"2026-01-30T02:30:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-30T02:30:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/397936\/"},"modified":"2026-01-30T02:30:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-30T02:30:08","slug":"t20-world-cup-ireland-beat-uae-in-opening-t20-as-world-cup-preparations-continue-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/397936\/","title":{"rendered":"T20 World Cup: Ireland beat UAE in opening T20 as World Cup preparations continue"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Meanwhile, Richard Holdsworth has announced he is to step down as director of cricket with Cricket Ireland.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Holdsworth first arrived at Cricket Ireland in 2011, spending 13 years as high performance director before taking up the director of cricket role two years ago.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">During his tenure, Holdsworth played a key role in building and professionalising Ireland&#8217;s elite cricket systems, including overseeing the development and implementation of central player contracts across men&#8217;s and women&#8217;s programmes.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He was also central in the transition from associate member to a full member of the International Cricket Council in 2017 with Ireland&#8217;s men achieving Test status in the same year, while supporting the reintroduction of the domestic men&#8217;s inter-provincial series and women&#8217;s super series.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I&#8217;m incredibly proud of what we have achieved together working with a team of outstanding staff,&#8221; Holdsworth said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;From our collective efforts to professionalise structures and support players at the highest level, to seeing Ireland compete with distinction on the global stage \u2014 it has been a privilege to be part of this journey.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Cricket Ireland will soon welcome a new chief executive officer, further marking a transition to the next phase of the organisation&#8217;s strategic growth and ambition, and I wish Sarah [Keane, incoming CEO] and the team continued growth and success.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Meanwhile, Richard Holdsworth has announced he is to step down as director of cricket with Cricket Ireland. Holdsworth&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":397878,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[1721,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-397936","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-cricket","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397936","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=397936"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397936\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/397878"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=397936"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=397936"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=397936"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}