Stirling and Garth named Ireland men's and women's players of the decade

Paul Stirling and Kim Garth were named Ireland's men's and women's players of the decade for 2011-20 at the Irish Cricket Awards on Friday night.

Stirling, who was also named as player of the year for 2020, had been shortlisted alongside Ed Joyce, Tim Murtagh, Kevin O'Brien and William Porterfield, and was picked for his "world-class" consistency.

"He has amazing natural talent with power and match-winning qualities," the judging panel said. "Opening the batting against top-quality bowling attacks, he has an outstanding strike rate which gives the team the best chance of being successful against the top nations."

"It's a pretty special award, I must admit," Stirling said. Over such a long period of time, to come out with something like that… there's so many great players that have been involved over the last 10 years, so to come out on top of that - [I'm] not quite sure how, but delighted to have received the award. It's just class."

Stirling was Ireland's leading run-scorer in the decade, making 5529 runs across formats including eight hundreds, all of them in ODIs.

Garth, who made her international debut as a 14-year-old in 2010, was shortlisted alongside Laura Delany, Cecelia and Isobel Joyce, and Clare Shillington. She was Ireland's leading wicket-taker in both ODIs and T20Is across the decade, and became one of the first six players to be awarded a professional contract by Cricket Ireland in 2019.

Last year, she left Irish cricket, instead committing to a two-year contract to play for Victoria in Australia. "It was a decision I'd thought about for quite a while and obviously it was very difficult knowing that my Irish career was something that was going to have to be put on hold for the time being," Garth said.

"Having spent a couple of years out here and seen how the system works, I decided that I wanted to play cricket for a living and unfortunately that wasn't feasible back home. It's been absolutely amazing. It's an incredibly strong side. I absolutely love being a part of it. It's essentially training with half of the Australian team every day."

Simi Singh was named inter-provincial player of the year and Laura Delany won the Super Series player of the year award, while the late Roy Torrens was recognised for his "outstanding contribution and service to Irish cricket".