Fantastic opportunities for girls in the game: Clare Shillington

BBC  about the development of the game since she made her debut as a 16-year-old in 1997.

"There's six girls now within the Irish set-up that are semi-professional, part-time contracted," Shillington said. "When I started we had three games a year if we were lucky - now there's fantastic opportunities for the girls that are in the game."

Shillington went on to play in 90 ODIs and 56 T20Is for Ireland, scoring 2,295 runs across formats. She played through a period when players had to pay for their own travel, and remained involved as the game transitioned into a semi-professional stage.

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"We had no memberships to gyms or access to additional staff like sports psychologists, nutritionists and all that," she told Sportsound Extra Time.

"For those that are in that Under-19 group that I'm involved with, there's a great pathway of opportunity within the game now and a lot of it does come down to funding."

"It wasn't there when I started but it was certainly there towards the back end of my career and I was very lucky to have access to fantastic sports psychologists and all those additional things that really make the small percentages, changes in your game that are so important."

In her glittering career which came to an end in the ICC Women's T20 World Cup 2018, Shillington became the first player from Ireland to play 100 matches. She also scored a century in a T20 match and bowed out on a high in her last match against New Zealand.

Just like the rest of the world, the COVID-19 pandemic has brought Ireland's cricket activity to a standstill with several men's and women's series called off. Through this period Cricket Ireland have tried to take a sustainable approach, to avoid massive paycuts. However, a large chunk of the non-playing staff have been furloughed.

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"It's very difficult for all the sporting bodies out there with potentially big tournaments coming up and whether they're on or not," added Shillington.

"I think Cricket Ireland have done a great job, I'm obviously not involved in the senior set-up anymore but I know they're doing a lot of online stuff. They're providing all the players with whatever equipment they can get to them to keep themselves fit and healthy at home, and continuing contact with things like the psychologists and nutritionists and all those sort of things."

"I know some countries are maybe not as affected as others but I suppose like anything you can only control the controllable."