Guernsey's women aiming to earn ICC ranking in Austria

The squad, who are captained by Krista De La Mare and coached by Ben Ferbrache and Lee Forshaw, will face hosts Austria in four T20I matches with their opponents ranked lowest of the 64 nations currently in the ICC T20I world rankings, having lost each of their last 14 matches.

‘We’re really excited to head over to Austria for our first international series, which is a big step for us,’ said De La Mare.

‘The team have trained really hard over the last few months working on areas we identified for improvement during the matches against Jersey and the RAF earlier this year.

‘We’re hoping all the hard work has paid off and if we play like we can I’m confident we will be able to get some good results.

‘Our goal this season was to achieve our first world ranking, so if we can do this in Austria with some wins it’ll be an amazing way to end the season.’

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The team took part in their first ever T20I in 2019, which was an inter-insular win over Jersey.

All their T20I international fixtures since then, have come against Jersey, and they played in a three-match inter-insular series back in June, which the Reds won 3-0.

This weekend’s programme consisted of back-to-back matches on both Sunday and Monday.

‘This will be our first time away in Europe coming up against new opposition, which is really exciting, and the fact that we can obtain a T20I ranking as well will be brilliant and provide a stepping stone for this group to move onwards and upwards from,’ said coach Ferbrache.

The squad will be sponsored by Gower and have a new travel partner in Specsavers.

Guernsey squad

Krista De La Mare (captain), Eva Bourgaize, Fran Bulpitt, Alice Davis, Marianne Le Ray, Hannah Eulenkamp, Rebecca Hubbard, Claire Jennings, Emily Merrien, Elise Millington, Charlotte Milner, Molly Robinson, Liz Willcocks.