Sarah Keane

And I think working with Sport Ireland and government and everybody, I think people have a good understanding of that.

But yeah, we're under pressure to deliver this the right way, the right design, the right money, all that sort of stuff.

And then obviously to come up with a sustainable model once it's built, which is obviously always part of the challenge when you're building infrastructure.

And there is no doubt that it will change things for Cricket Ireland because at the moment we have to bring infrastructure in.

Every time we host an event, you've got to bring seating in, you've got to bring toilets, you've got to do all those sort of things.

And that does make it financially challenging.

So my understanding from speaking to a lot of people is, first of all, cricket has been heavily male dominated and continues to be in a lot of ways.

So I think our participation numbers would be less than 30% for women and girls.

So we still have a long way to go in that regard.

So there's a lot of work underway with clubs to try and build a youth section for

and a female section so that is a massive growth piece and speaking to anybody that is a massive growth piece without a doubt the other piece is the inclusion ability for others I mean cricket can be adapted quite well so the ability for others of different abilities to be involved and to join in so that's the second part which I think we've started to do but I think there's a lot more we can do which is again I'm excited by the potential of it and the third of course is that it is a sport where we have a lot of new people coming into the country who for them it's a really important sport and want to play it

And the challenge is sometimes now they're playing in public parks without, you know, which things can be rained off or maybe they want to be there for hours and yet somebody else has to come in.

So I think it's a dilemma, but it's one that we prefer to have rather than not.

So cricket is the second biggest sport in the world.

So I suppose I challenge a bit around talking about certain sports in terms of using the word minority sport.

And it's a growing sport here, but it has an opportunity to be massive.

Yes, but I keep meeting people who tell me that they've played it and for some reason, even in public schools, because it's associated with private schools or it's associated with the summer.

And I was down with Minister McConnellogue and others down in Wexford and they've just, they're about to turn this out on an athletic pitch, but also a cricket pitch.

And, you know, there's a lot of conversations going on.

So I think people are seeing it as an opportunity to, you know, that people want to play it.