Who is Lloyd Tennant, Ireland's new head coach?

The man chosen to replace Ed Joyce speaks to the media for the first time

📸: Cricket Ireland

Enter Lloyd Tennant.

Just under two weeks from the start of the women’s international summer, the man chosen to replace Ed Joyce as Ireland head coach comes into focus. He takes over a squad not in a bad place, but a strange one.

The ODI World Cup qualifiers which marked the end of Joyce’s tenure (he announced his decision to resign well before the tournament) were nothing short of a disaster. Ireland worked into multiple winning positions only to find new ways to lose, although dropped catches were a consistent theme.

This is an Irish side with plenty of promise. We all know of their heralded ‘big three’ batting talent, Gaby Lewis, Amy Hunter and Orla Prendergast. Wins over Sri Lanka and England in the last 12 months created a sense of optimism; this was a side building for the future.

Then came those brutal qualifiers, Ireland knocked out of contention inside a week. This after last year’s T20 qualifiers ended in collapse to Scotland. Ireland’s squad is young but has hit a plateau. Bilateral victories over so-called bigger nations are not the same achievements they once were. This is a group which is too talented to miss out on World Cups, yet they have failed to reach the last three global showpieces.

Joyce felt, not that he had taken this squad as far as he could, but in order to avoid future staleness while acknowledging the toll of constantly being on the road, decided it was someone else’s job to turn these bilateral foundations into global success. In his introduction to the press, Tennant was asked how he intended to do just that.

Tennant offered just enough cricketing detail to avoid relying solely on meaningless platitudes, but when it came to some of the more prying questions, he offered a straight bat. When volunteering technical information with minimal prodding, he sounded impressive. When asked to address the mental block built up during the qualifier, his answers were more mundane.

Let’s start with the bad, as far as Ireland are concerned. At one point, such was the catching malaise during the qualifiers, it genuinely looked that unless the ball was hit to Gaby Lewis or Orla Prendergast, the catch was going down. Tennant confirmed that he believes the issue is mental, rather than technical. Although mental blocks can lead to technique going out the window, resulting in some ugly catching attempts.

“We’ve not got to our first game,” said Tennant. “Once we get collectively as a group we’ll try to be competitive and as positive as we can around that [fielding]. Once confidence grows, you start to see people grow. Once you take a few great catches we’re off and flying.

“There’s games, and games played under high pressure. It’s hard to replicate that. There’s also learning from those experiences. It’s such a young side, failure can be expected. It’s needed to learn from. How can we reframe it, work with sports psychologists to make sure that we take lessons from each game. If we’re wining all the games now, where do you learn stuff?”

Mundane enough, really. But he’s hardly going to come out and promise the sun, moon and stars given what we saw the last time this group played in Pakistan. Confidence only really comes from games and it’s well documented that Ireland doesn’t play enough hard-edged cricket. The flip side of Tennant’s point is also true as, once one catch goes down, the affliction can spread like a disease.

What Tennant didn’t say, but what has emerged from camp in recent months, is captain Lewis’ approach to the fielding woes. One figure with knowledge of training has said she has looked to ban fielding gloves in a bid to replicate match conditions. She is also believed to have encouraged more player responsibility for fielding standards. Which would suggest that, in the past, scrutiny for errors came from the coaching staff, rather than players holding teammates to account. It remains to be seen if players do take more responsibility and if results improve. Or does one of the better fielders in the team demanding players to aspire to a higher level simply build resentment?

Back to Tennant. Perhaps inevitably, he was asked about facilities. One of the reasons given behind the scenes for Ireland’s catching woes in Pakistan was that, training indoors in North County for most of the winter, high catches couldn’t be hit. You can’t launch the ball high when there’s a roof.

We all know about Ireland’s lack of facilities, particularly compared to the English county set-up where Tennant previously worked. Other figures who come from abroad have left Ireland pulling their hair out in frustration as what they see as a lack of infrastructure. Add to that Ireland’s fixture list. They haven’t played since April and only have eight days of home cricket, albeit a T20 World Cup qualifier in August adds to the summer load. Has it been a shock for the Englishman?

“Having worked in a variety of roles, I’ve always had to adjust to the facilities we’ve got,” he said. “We’ve got good nets, places we can field outdoors. I’ve not seen how the winter will look yet.

“The difference being, I’ve worked in a county where everything is on your doorstep, everyone’s together and people come in every day. With the players being spread across the country, I don’t see that as a problem. That means I get in my car and do a few miles to make sure we don’t have players travelling all over the place. That’s the biggest difference I’ve found, being spread out. We’ve had a few middle practices, up north and down south coming up. We’ve got the squad together and are trying to gel them as a team.”

Tennant’s own background came up, given his coaching expertise lies in bowling. During the press conference, he instinctively talked about fast bowling as an area of improvement for Ireland, without being asked about that specific discipline. Ireland already has a bowling coach, Glen Querl. Joyce was the batting coach, and with a bowling expert coming in, there are legitimate questions on who acts as the batting specialist.

“Because of how it’s set up, players up north, players down south, we all have to coach across the board anyway,” says Tennant. “The girls are in a very good place with the batting, technically. I come at coaching batting from a bowler’s aspect. How would people bowl at you? You don’t always have to be coaching in that technical way. You can spot faults as a bowler in a batter. I’ve tried to give them a different experience.”

Some of the squad’s batters have their own personal coaches, even while they worked with Joyce. This is not an unusual phenomenon in world cricket. But not having an out and out batting coach on the staff will be something to watch out for as the side progresses.

Amy Maguire also came up in conversation, given she has been playing club cricket since her ICC bowling suspension for an illegal action, but only as a batter. Is she back to bowling soon?

“She’s doing brilliantly, she absolutely looks fine to me,” said Tennant. “She’s not a worry at all. At the right time, right place we’ll get her back into the team.

“Hopefully she’ll be going [for re-testing in Loughborough] shortly. We’ll get her some cricket and she’ll go at the right pace.”

What about the squad more generally? We teased that Tennant offered some nuggets about where he sees this squad improving. Take it away, sir.

“There’s scope for us to develop a quicker seam attack. They’ve got potential, some of the girls to bowl a bit quicker I think. That will help us take wickets and be more aggressive with the ball.

'“We’ve got another off-spinner [Lara McBride] coming into the spin bowling pack so that will give us options going forward. And we know we’re a pretty decent batting side so I think the changes will hopefully come in the wicket taking department earlier than the batting.

“We know the batting group is strong, but could we add some power hitting to get some slightly bigger scores?”

If Ed Joyce’s stamp on this team was winning matches while developing the batting talent of Lewis, Hunter and Prendergast (a few others took notable strides with the bat), the initial marker of Tennant’s tenure could be pace. Prendergast is Ireland’s fastest bowler but she isn’t quick quick, by global standards. That Tennant believes others can catch up to her on the speed gun is fascinating. Mainly because, looking at the squads selected for Zimbabwe, you’d question who has that potential?

Georgina Dempsey is probably Ireland’s next quickest bowler but she’s only just back from injury. She played her first Super Series game on Monday but didn’t bowl. Prendergast aside, she seems to have the most raw bowling talent, both in terms of pace and movement off the pitch. But after bursting onto the seam when nipping one through Alyssa Healy’s defences in 2023, she hasn’t quite hit the same heights as her four-fer against Australia.

But Dempsey won’t play against Zimbabwe. The seamers in the group are Prendergast, Jane Maguire, Louise Little, Arlene Kelly, Laura Delany, Alana Dalzell, Ava Canning and Sophie MacMahon.

Pretty much all of those players are ‘keeper up, medium pace bowlers, maybe Little aside. Based on age and athletic profile, the ones you would imagine might be best able to add velocity are Little and perhaps Dalzell. Though the latter has been effective swinging the new ball away from the right-hander at a gentle enough pace.

Are these players going to be bowling 75mph in 10 days’ time? No. But as time goes on, Tennant has certainly given us something intriguing to keep an eye on. He is right in looking down this path. Ireland’s inability to take new ball wickets has been an issue.

We all know about the lack of spin depth, especially when Aimee Maguire and Freya Sargent missed the qualifiers through suspension and injury respectively. Sargent has just returned to the Super Series and, while fit, has not been picked. McBride is the off-spinner instead, Ireland opting for her over Kia McCartney who was in the squad in Pakistan.

The other glaring hole in this Irish line-up is batting depth. Especially in 50-over cricket, if Lewis, Hunter or Prendergast don’t fire, there’s a lack of both power hitting and run-scoring ability. Laura Delany has improved her power game while Leah Paul and Christina Coulter-Reilly have scored runs while showing a better ability to occupy the crease, but more is needed.

“We’ve got the luxury of quite a lot of all-rounders,” says Tennant. “I’m pretty convinced some of those can push their batting forwards and make themselves genuine all-rounders as opposed to bowling all-rounders as we’ve seen at the moment, so we can develop depth in our batting.”

It’s interesting that Tennant wants batting depth to come from the all-rounders, rather than other out and out batters. Which makes sense - no top order batter is displacing the current main three. Looking at his comments, it’s hard not to point again at the likes of Dempsey and Little as bowling all-rounders who can add batting depth. Little has power in her game, she just hasn’t routinely shown it. Dempsey has a score against South Africa and Shabnim Ismail, the game’s fastest bowler, to her name. These are the players to watch out for, albeit Dempsey isn’t back involved yet.

All of which leaves Tennant’s vision fairly clear. We’ll wrap with the man himself outlining exactly where he thinks Ireland can grow.

“Over the next three years, if we develop a couple of bowlers with pace, develop our spin skillset and get one of the all-rounders into a genuine all-rounder, and probably one batter through, you’re looking at three or four players to nail down their spot.

“Then you’ve got a side with, what’s the average age, 21, 22? It’s a very young side. Generally in cricket you’re at your best late 20s. If you look in the growth in maturity, I think it’s a genuine thing we can qualify for World Cups and move up the rankings.”