Irish teenager Anna Kerrison becomes first female at Darren Lehmann Cricket Academy

IRISH teenager Anna Kerrison is a women’s cricket trailblazer travelling halfway around the world to become the first female at the Darren Lehmann Academy.

IRELAND’S Anna Kerrison is a Darren Lehmann Cricket Academy trailblazer.

Kerrison has travelled halfway around the world to become the first female to train at the eight-year-old academy – and she is just 16.

She will spend the summer aiming to improve at the same place that helped develop Englishmen Monty Panesar, Joe Root and Alex Hales for international cricket, while mixing it with more than a dozen lads.

Not that it fazes the softly spoken all-rounder.

“It might be a bit of a challenge but that’s OK,” says Kerrison, who will play Grade cricket for Port Adelaide. “It’s not new to play with guys – I did it from since I started … until I was 13. It was normal.

“I’m eager to learn more, improve as a cricketer and develop my game.”

Kerrison, from the tiny town of Kilcock, splits her time between her club Leinster, Ireland’s under-17s and the Irish senior team in ­England’s County Championship second division.

The right-hand batsman and seamer followed older brother Jack into cricket seven years ago, joining a boys squad at North Kildare.

In the early years, she was playing alongside her mum, Eunice, who took up the sport at 45.

“I used to say to her, ‘if you get a wicket, I’ll give you five euro’,” Eunice says. “One week she got five wickets and the last wicket came to me and she was screaming ‘catch it, catch it’.”

Eunice enrolled her daughter in the academy after conversations with head coach Shaun Seigert, but kept the fact she would be the only female a secret.

“She doesn’t actually ­realise the enormity of what she’s doing and we’ve played it down because we didn’t want to frighten her,” ­Eunice says.

Once her academy stint ends in December or March, Kerrison, who narrowly missed selection for last year’s World Cup, hopes to become a national team regular – something that has long been her goal.

“People have said ‘what do you want to do’ and she’s ­always, in her little childish way, said she wants to be a professional cricketer,” ­Eunice says.

Seigert says Kerrison’s stint is “huge” for the academy, which expects to attract more female trainees in coming years.

“It is something no one has done here before,” Seigert says.

“She’ll be training in a man’s world where she’ll be tested physically and mentally … and she’s only 16.”