'Nervous and excited': Garth returns to Ireland

Kim Garth's cricket journey will come full circle this week when she goes head-to-head with her former teammates at Clontarf Cricket Club, as Australia play their first one-dayers against Ireland since 2005.

There were smiles and hugs when Garth caught up with a group of Irish players including captain Laura Delany at a cricket clinic at iconic Gaelic sports stadium Croke Park on Thursday.

But on Sunday, the 27-year-old could find herself playing against Ireland for the first time since she walked away from international cricket – at the time it seemed likely forever – in early 2020 to take up a domestic contract with Victoria.

Australia and Ireland went head-to-head in a T20 World Cup warm-up game in Stellenbosch in February, but Garth sat out that match.

The fast bowler has not featured in the Australian XI since the sole Ashes Test at Trent Bridge and carried the drinks across all six white-ball games.

However her inclusion on Sunday is made likelier by the absence of Megan Schutt, who returned home following the final Ashes ODI.

"I'm a little bit nervous and excited at the same time as well," Garth said on Thursday.

"And if I do get the chance to go out there and play on Sunday, I'm sure it'll be a bit of a weird experience.

"But the Irish girls have been really supportive on my journey and I'm still friends with a lot of them and that's something that I'm very appreciative of.

"We got in two nights ago and I took the opportunity to spend a little bit of time at home with my parents and my brothers.

"It's been really cool just trying to show the girls around some good spots in Dublin."

Garth took the field for the first of her 85 internationals for Ireland when she was just 14 years of age – at the time, she was the youngest person to play a T20 International – and in 2021 she was named Ireland's player of the decade.

Moving to Australia was a tough call but one she had to make to pursue her dream of living the life of a full-time professional cricketer – something that was not an option in Ireland at the time.

The benefits of that move paid off handsomely, with Garth earning an Australia debut in India last December, just months after becoming eligible to do so.

"I'm still kind of pinching myself that I'm in this side and they are – we are, sorry – the best team in the world," she said.

"There's so much talent coming through in domestic cricket so you've got to do everything you can to stay ahead of the game and just make sure you keep improving.

"But being in an environment like this, it's hard not to try and better yourself and improve with the resources we have around us, we're very lucky."

Garth could be forgiven for a couple of slips of the tongue when reflecting on her remarkable journey.

But as impressive as her achievements have been, it is a path she hopes other Irish players will not need to follow in the pursuit of professionalism.

In 2022, Cricket Ireland introduced full-time women's contracts for the first time and this year, there were nine players awarded full-time deals while another six earned part-time contracts.

"I definitely follow their results and I think they've improved so much since I've left the side," she said.

"There's an incredible amount of talent in that side and they've had some really promising results … I think they're only going from strength to strength, and they've got some incredible talent coming through."

Bilateral series between Ireland and Australia will also become more frequent following the latter's inclusion in the ICC Women's ODI Championship.

The Championship is a quadrennial round-robin tournament between the top 10 teams played for points that determine automatic World Cup qualification.

Australia will have more than just Championship points on their minds this week however, following their 2-1 defeat to England in the ODI leg of the multi-format Ashes, which was their first bilateral series loss in the format since 2013.

While they retained the Ashes, England won four of the six white-ball games in level to level the series 8-8 and deny Australia an outright victory.

"We played some good cricket over the Ashes but the girls to be honest are a little bit disappointed in terms of the position that we were in in the series (leading 6-0) and to then only draw it," Garth said.

"So this is another really good opportunity to get out there and hopefully play some good cricket and get a bit of momentum and a bit of confidence for the girls heading into the home season."