Irish cap Downunder to polish all round skills

Eimear Richardson is at pains to clarify the pronunciation of her first name.
"Eeema ... ummm ... okay," the 24-year-old from the Republic of Ireland says in her brogue accent as she draws a blank.
"Try dreamer, now drop the 'd' and 'r' and it's 'eamer' ... get it?" she asks, a smile enveloping her serious expression, amid nods of approval.
The Irish international from Dublin is a member of the Central Districts Hinds squad competing in the women's Action Cup and Twenty20 domestic cricket competition this 2010-11 season after four northern summers away from home.
She arrived here from the Dandenong Cricket Club, in Melbourne, after friend and CD player Esther Lanser invited her for a holiday.
After a meeting with CD coach Doug Bracewell, she represented Manawatu in a trial match against the Bay in Palmerston North in November.
"It's always what I wanted to do so when Doug said I was in the CD squad, I was pretty excited," the Leinster Cricket Club member says before the start of today's third round of competition against the Auckland Hearts at Colin Maiden Park outer oval, Auckland, after Melville Park was declared unfit to play on.
She made a one-week visit to sort out issues in Melbourne, considering she was expected to move into a flat there after her holiday in New Zealand.
A guest at Lanser's home in Carterton, Richardson misses home a little but the thought of a bitterly cold northern winter is enough to keep her in check.
Considering herself a bowler who can bat, Richardson hasn't had much joy with the ball or bat in the domestic competition.
She scored 25 runs in her first one-dayer against Otago last month and 12 in a Twenty20 match but had an inauspicious start with the ball, going for 19 runs off two overs in the second T20 match.
On Tuesday she found herself relegated to 12th man for the two-tile defending champions CD as she chastised herself for dropping a dolly at mid on to give Northern Spirit opener Natalie Dodd another life.
It didn't help that Richardson had to have surgery in Melbourne early last year for a dodgy shoulder through "over-use".
"I had to re-learn how to bowl and throw the ball," the off-spinner laments.
Richardson, who bats at No4 for Ireland and fills in as an opener when the incumbents are unavailable, hopes to glean enough skills to help offer her country the edge to make the cut this November during the qualifiers in Bangladesh for the 2013 World Cup in India.
Ireland failed to qualify for last year's World Cup.
The University College Dublin sports management graduate, who made her ODI debut as an 18-year-old in 2005 and has 20 caps under her belt in both forms of the game, did not pick up a ball or bat until she was 13.
The daughter of Paul Richardson, a self-employed house maintenance man, and Fionnuala, an immigration agency employee, was into hockey, badminton, netball and tennis as a child. Her elder brother, Peter, now 25, was about to attend a private school and needed to pick up cricketing skills urgently.
Their mother suggested Richardson tag along with her brother to the Leinster club.
"I could hit a ball straight, I suppose, because I played hockey and I could bowl hard," she reveals, adding she graduated to the club's women's team two years later.
Two half tons in four overs during state age-group matches caught the Irish selectors' eye and the rest is academic.
"I absolutely love cricket. I was in the age-group hockey team too at the time. but I went for cricket because it offers more opportunities and I enjoy it."
"I was a big fish in a small pond at home so I thought I'd go to the bigger ponds," Richardson says, immediately finding a gulf between the standard played in Ireland and Melbourne and the domestic competition here.
"My whole game here has to lift so there's no room for slacking off. I have to be awake on the field all the time," she says.