2019 Open Division 16 review - North Kildare 4 bounce back to take title

Open Division 16 stats

Leading all time run scorer (2015-2019) - Terry Bruton (Ashbourne) - 702 runs @ 43.88
Most runs in a Division 16 season - Sunil Trikha (Carlow) - 528 runs (2015)
Highest score - Abid Ali - 193* - North Kildare 4 vs Greystones 3 - Greystones - Druids - 8 Sep 2019
Leading all time wicket taker (2015-2019) - Stephen Hadley (Bagenalstown) - 49 wkts @ 15.31
Most wickets in a Division 16 season - Ajayveer Malhan (North Kildare) - 33 wkts (2015)
Best bowling - Mat Baker - 8-21 - Bagenalstown 3 vs Ashbourne 2 - McGrath Park - 17 June 2017
Most matches - Ganapathy Subramanian (Adamstown) - 45 (2015-2019)

Team of the Year

Review
In Open Division 16, three games resulted in a side being given a walkover and six matches were not played for other reasons (including rain).
Runs per wicket for all teams - 17.01 Runs per over for all teams - 4.28 - Division Competitiveness 95%

North Kildare 4 - Champions - (Pos in league - 119 (2018 - N/A)) - Batting Rating 119 - Bowling Rating 116 - RpO for 5.15 - RpO against 4.03 - Youth %age (by appearances) 27.3% - Average age of team 25.7

After a tough 2018, North Kildare bounced back with a bang in 2019, winning all four league titles available to them in the Open Competitions. As Eddie Lewis co-author of Cricket Leinster's centenary book, "100 Not Out", said at last week's launch, North Kildare are the first four team club in Cricket Leinster's 100 year history to have all their teams win league titles. After three games of the season, things may not have looked quite as positive. The first three matches of the season were lost (to Adamstown, Carlow and Mullingar). However the Carlow result was over turned, and the team embarked on an eight match unbeaten run to seal the title. The team were well balanced, and three members of that team made the Team of the Year. More on that shortly. League systems as a whole are just a way to divide a big group of sporting teams into smaller units. And where that split occurs makes a big difference in whether a team comes bottom of a league, or top of the league below it. In North Kildare 4th's case, this was their lowest league position since 2015, and pretty much the same as in 2018 (North Kildare 4th's dropped out of the league, but their 3rds finished in 119th place). So a glorious success, but lots more work to do! Two allrounders led the team - and made Team of the Year. Kawsar Islam scored 221 runs at 27.63 along with 27 wickets at 9.22, making him the highest wicket taker in Division 16 this year. The other allrounder was 15 year old Vishal Venkatesan, who scored 237 runs at 23.70 and 10 wickets at 22.30, who had the best season of his career so far. The third TotY player was Abid Ali who scored 294 at 73.50, including 193*, the highest score ever recorded in Division 16. The record breaking innings happened towards the end of the year when North Kildare travelled to Druids Glen to take on Greystones, running up 310-8 on the back of Abid's knock. Three other bowlers contributed handsomely to the title - Tarik Ullah with 14 wickets at 13.14, Aalamjeet Singh with 13 wickets at 12.46 (as well as 190 runs at 31.67) and Tarun Goel with 11 wickets at 10.27.

Adamstown 6 - 2nd - (Pos in league - 120 (2018 - 127)) - Batting Rating 109 - Bowling Rating 102 - RpO for 4.32 - RpO against 4.22 - Youth %age (by appearances) 30.8% - Average age of team 32.1

An excellent second season in league cricket for Adamstown 6, who improved on the their 2018 position by seven places. There was never any real chance of winning the league, with the team never winning more than two matches in a row, and the last chances evaporated after losing to Carlow in mid August. In depth analysis of the season is struggling to be that positive though! There is an argument that 3rd place Civil Service should perhaps have pipped Adamstown to the runners up spot, as Service won the one match that was completed (and the other one was abandoned with the game evenly poised. We had Adamstown ranked as the 3rd best team in the division (to whom will be revealed later), and the individual performances in the team don't look like those of a team at the top end of the table. Only Rajnish Kumar Malik made the Team of the Year, hitting 294 runs at 58.80 runs in the seven innings he batted (he also took 10 wickets at 15.5). He hit 120* in a losing cause against Balbriggan and took 5-15 in Adamstown's highlight of the season, the win over North Kildare. Faisal Iqbal took 10 wickets at 10.3 and Ganapathy Subramanian was the leading bowler with 20 wickets at 15.75. There was a severe shortage of runs and five times they were bowled out for less than 150, which wasn't quite the form of a promotion winning side. However, the final league table is all that matters!

Civil Service 4 - 3rd - (Pos in league - 121 (2018 - 124)) - Batting Rating 90 - Bowling Rating 119 - RpO for 4.61 - RpO against 2.73 - Youth %age (by appearances) 8.3% - Average age of team 36.2

The headlines are positive for Civil Service 4, with a third place finish, giving them a three place improvement on 2018, and the highest finish in the league since 2016. It was an odd season though - on the pitch they were 5-4 with two walkovers received, an OCC decided match in their favour and a couple more matches rained off. It doesn't quite feel like a full season! And although they only finished three points behind Adamstown, wins in the last four games (including those two walkovers), saw Service move from the lower reaches to third - rather than nearly taking them to promotion. Runs were a problem to come by and remarkably, Dave Nugent was the leading run scorer with only 119 runs at 29.75, and only once all season did the team score more than 160. The bowling attack was a different story though, with two bowlers ensuring that it was difficult to get runs against Service, and finding their way on to the Team of the Year as a result. The top bowler by a long way was Abdul Sammad Khan, who took 23 wickets at 8.30 and probably deserved more than his two games on Civil Service 3. Asad Arshad only played six games for the 4ths, but took 10 wickets at a very useful 5.90, but four of the matches he played in were won.

Greystones 3 - 4th - (Pos in league - 122 (2018 - 118)) - Batting Rating 94 - Bowling Rating 69 - RpO for 3.86 - RpO against 34.84 - Youth %age (by appearances) 1.4% - Average age of team 48.2

Hopefully no one in the Greystones 3rds team takes offence by the statement that there are many reasons why teams play league cricket, and one of them (as was also stated in the Division 17 review) is that a bunch of old mates want to play some league cricket together. It could be argued that this isn't strictly relevant, but when the average age of a team is 48 and bowling was an Achilles heel for the team, it can't be ignored. Hopefully when all these reviews are completed, we will be able to come up with a graphic plotting age of team against bowling effectiveness, but until then we will leave it there as a hypothesis that in order to bowl teams out, you need to have a young bowling attack. Three bowlers got to ten wickets for the season, Paul Thompson (12 at 14.17), Jim Stewart (11 at 24.45) and Feargal O'Hanlon (10 at 12). There were four wins on the pitch during the season, over Bagenalstown (twice), Civil Service and Balbriggan, and in a league where all the teams from 4th down were deducted points for various transgressions, Greystones were penalised much less than the others. Rob Massey was the leading run scorer with 210 at 19.09, with David Cavanagh coming next on the list scoring 175 at 21.88, including the sides only 50 of the season, scoring 69 in the 82 run win at home to Bagenalstown.

Balbriggan 4 - 5th - (Pos in league - 123 (2018 - 125)) - Batting Rating 109 - Bowling Rating 78 - RpO for 4.85 - RpO against 4.65 - Youth %age (by appearances) 44.5% - Average age of team 28.0

A season very much of two halves for Balbriggan 4, who for the fourth year in a row ended between 121st and 125th in the league. We will call the two halves, the Derek Rooney half and the non-Derek Rooney half. The Derek Rooney half ran from the start of the season until June 8th, and saw five games won (although one was reversed by the OCC). Rooney was supreme in those matches, batting five times with scores of 100, 75*, 83, 82* and 6* for 346 runs at 173. Those performances earned Rooney a place on the Team of the Year. Then Rooney was promoted to the 2nds. The team won one from the next six, and possible promotion turned to mid table anonymity. Haseeb Basharat (178 at 35.60) and John Keeler (189 at 47.25) scored well throughout the season, but it was too much to find anyone capable of Rooney's form. Rooney's most amazing performance was in a losing cause against Carlow. Chasing 164 to win, Balbriggan were in big trouble early on. They were 7-4 when Rooney came in, and kept losing wickets, before Rooney hit 83 from 116, with the next highest score being 9. The bowling struggled, although Mick McDonnell had a good season with 15 wickets at 11.93. Support was the problem though and only Terence Kiernan (10 at 21.10) got to ten wickets.

Mullingar 3 - 6th - (Pos in league - 124 (2018 - 115)) - Batting Rating 105 - Bowling Rating 98 - RpO for 4.08 - RpO against 4.49 - Youth %age (by appearances) 12.7% - Average age of team 32.6

Not a year to look back on with any fondness for Mullingar 3, who slipped to their lowest league position since we started recording such things in 2011 - below their previous worst of 117 in 2016. They won the same number of games as Civil Service in 3rd place, but a late season walkover given, and three matches that didn't get results (Bagenalstown, Carlow and Civil Service) hut them badly. Based on performances on the pitch, we had them as the 5th best team, so they were possibly a bit better than 6th implied. But with a big 32 player squad, there was little chance for players to pile up big numbers. No batsman got to 200 runs, with the highest being Ravi Mehta's 197 at 21.89. Mehta was the rock that the team was built around, and stalwart (of many clubs as well as Mullingar) also took 14 wickets at 15.21. One player made our Team of the Year though, Tristan Couper making his second appearance after making the Division 10 team last year. Not surprisingly, he was a handful in Division 16, taking 14 wickets at 8.57.

Bagenalstown 3 - 7th - (Pos in league - 125 (2018 - 117)) - Batting Rating 91 - Bowling Rating 100 - RpO for 3.56 - RpO against 4.52 - Youth %age (by appearances) 22.7% - Average age of team 36.5

Bagenalstown 3 were another team who slipped this year, having their lowest league position since their first season in 2015. Only three matches were won (all from July onwards), and with every one else in the league winning at least four matches, there was a big gap between Bagenalstown in 7th and Mullingar in 6th. Ahsan Wijesinghe was solid with 229 runs at 20.82 and 16 wickets at 17.63, and next on the batting list was Sean Farrell who made our Team of the Year as wicketkeeper, with 6 dismissals and 160 runs at 20. Sajjad Malik was leading wicket taker with 22 wickets at 11.55 and Faizan Shah took 12 at 12.58.

Carlow 2 - 8th - (Pos in league - 126 (2018 - 120)) - Batting Rating 78 - Bowling Rating 138 - RpO for 4.61 - RpO against 3.50 - Youth %age (by appearances) 32.5% - Average age of team 22.8

There are enough sub plots in the review of Carlow's season to fill out a Coen Brothers film (titled "Carlow" of course). The youngest team in the league, the best bowling attack, the second best team over all, a team who scored at over one run per over more than they conceded. And yet they came last. How can that be? Off field administrational issues affected Carlow badly, with 50 points being shorn off their total - but that was only 25 points more than most of the others in the bottom half of the table. There is no need to look any further than their records at home in St Patrick's College and away. In Carlow, they won all five games played, whilst on the road, they won one from the six played. 19 year old Sofiat Alam was one of two Carlow players on our Team of the Year with 261 runs at 37.29. He was well supported by Mohammed Ismail II who hit 184 t 26.29. But it was the bowling where Carlow excelled (or at least excelled in coming bottom of the league). Mohammed Younus made TotY with 21 wickets at 7.38, Mohammed Ismail II added to his runs with 13 at 12.77, Mohammed Ismail III took 12 at 9.33 and Inzmam Haq took 10 at 10.30.

The full Division 16 batting averages can be found here, whilst the bowling averages are here