Division 7 stats
Leading all time run scorer (2011-2018) - Jinto Mathew (DLR County/Dundrum) - 1444 runs @ 27.77
Most runs in a Division 7 season - Declan Moore (Ringcommons) - 589 runs (2017)
Highest score - Sanjay Saharan (Merrion) - 196 - Merrion 5 vs Malahide 4 - Bird Avenue - 6 June 2011
Leading all time wicket taker (2011-2018) - Jinto Mathew (DLR County/Dundrum) - 101 wkts @ 15.55
Most wickets in a Division 7 season - Susheel Kumar (Leinster) - 27 wkts (2012)
Best bowling - Rajiv Diwan (Adamstown) - 7-7 - Adamstown 2 vs North Kildare 2 - The Maws - 4 Jun 2018
Highest team score - 425-3 - Greystones 1 vs Balbriggan 2 - Marlay Park - 14 Sep 2013
Lowest team score - 20 all out - North Kildare 2 vs Adamstown 2- The Maws - 4 Jun 2018
Most Matches in Division 7 (2011-2018) - Alan Murphy (Malhaide/Wexford Wanderers) - 75 (2011-2017)
Cricket Leinster's new website will be launching in the spring, but until then all player stats for the last eight seasons can be found at https://www2.cricketstatz.com/ss/web.aspx?mode=104&club=4530&team=.
Team of the Year (listed in the order, five batsmen/one wicketkeeper/five bowlers)
Batsmen: Finbarr O'Halloran (Clontarf), Michael Kirk (Greystones) (Div 4, 2016), Manpreet Singh (Greystones) (Div 4, 2014; Div 8, 2016), Bradley Fernandes (Adamstown) (Div 9, 2015), Kamil Mahajan (Adamstown) (Div 9, 2012)
Wicketkeeper: Aidan Longstaff (Greystones) (Div 16, 2015)
Bowlers: Vinay Iqbal (Sandyford), Rajiv Diwan (Adamstown), Mohammad Abdullah (Sandyford), Navaneethakrishnan Venkataramanan (Adamstown) (Div 10, 2018), Pankaj Bhamare (Clontarf)
Review
Runs per wicket for all teams - 18.94 Runs per over for all teams - 4.53
A short introduction to Division 7. A normal 8 team league has 56 matches per year. With Dublin University 2 in the division, this is reduced to 49 matches, with Dublin University only playing each team once. Unfortunately North Kildare had major problems in 2018, played five matches and withdrew from the league. On top of this Ringcommons also gave two walkovers. It meant that only 38 matches were played (and only 33 recorded as being played in the league table). North Kildare's five matches have been included in these stats.
Adamstown 2 - Champions - (Pos in league - 50 (2017 - 59)) - Batting Rating 117 - Bowling Rating 134 - RpO for 6.20 - RpO against 3.45 - Youth %age (by appearances) 0.8%
In the truncated Division 7 season, Adamstown 2 won their second league title (the first since the Division 12 win in 2013). Their first team won this league in 2014. It would hopefully be fair to say that it wasn't the most dominant team performance we've looked at this year. The second game of the season was lost to DLR County, and both matches against runners-up Clontarf 4 were lost. There were massive wins against Sandyford, North Kildare and Greystones, but as ever in tight seasons, there is a match that the season hinged on. On May 19 against Ringcommons, Adamstown were struggling at 125-7 and 150-8 before Gursharan Singh Lubana (29) and Navaneethakrishnan Venkataramanan (38*) got Adamstown up to 228. At 199-5, Ringcommons were against in complete control, before "st Prakash Chandrasekaran b Navaneethakrishnan Venkataramanan" entered Adamstown folklore. Three of the next four wickets fell in that way, and with wickets tumbling, Rory Moore and Delane Moore fell two runs short. And that was the difference between Adamstown winning and not winning Division 7. Four players made our Team of the Year. Only two players passed 200 runs, with both making our Team. Bradley Fernandes made 330 at 36.67 to make his first TotY since Division 9 in 2015 and Kamil Mahajan made 250 at 35.71 - his first since Division 9 way back in 2012. Rajiv Diwan broke Sanjeeb Barik's 2014 record of best bowling for Adamstown when he took 7-7 against North Kildare. He finished with 22 wickets at 8.76. The final Adamstown Team of the Year player was Navaneethakrishnan Venkataramanan, although a slight black mark as he became the third player this year to win his second award. He played consistently for both Adamstown 2 and 3 during the season; probably shouldn't have been playing on the latter team, and ended up with 12 Division 7 wickets at 10.58. Two other bowlers got to ten wickets - Manoj Monterio with 12 at 19, and Gursharan Singh Lubana with 12 at 19.54.
Clontarf 4 - Runners up - (Pos in league - 51 (2017 - 58)) - Batting Rating 114 - Bowling Rating 112 - RpO for 5.13 - RpO against 4.36 - Youth %age (by appearances) 13.5%
One way at looking at the destination of the Division 7 trophy is by the games that Adamstown managed to win such as the narrow win over Ringcommons. Unfortunately there is also the other way of looking at it 0 the games that Clontarf lost. As we have already seen. they did the hard work by beating Adamstown twice. But needing to win two of their last three matches (as it turned out), they lost to DLR County and Greystones to finish seven points behind the winners. The Greystones match was the last throw of the dice, but Greystones' star players stood up on the day, with John Fitzsimons, Martin Potts and Michael Kirk all scoring well to get Greystones to 206. As we have seen throughout the reviews, there is a huge amount of pressure involved in such chases, and although Naveed Rana and Ronan Craw got starts, only Finbarr O'Halloran got to 50, and Clontarf's title disappeared as they finished 27 runs short. Playing in his third season for Clontarf, O'Halloran was a revelation. After averaging 7.6 in 2016, and 15.86 in 2017, he was a new player in 2018, scoring 442 runs at 73.67 in all cricket, and 358 runs at 89.50 in the league. If one more player could have supported him, Tarf may have prevailed, but no one else passed 200 runs. The leading Clontarf wicket taker also made the TotY - Pankaj Bhamare taking 22 wickets at 11.05. It was the joint highest number if wickets taken in a league season, tying Sean Devilly's 2016 return. Mustafa Tanveer took 14 at 12,71, Devilly himself took 12 at 15.25, and 16 year old Ben McCabe took 10 at 11.10. Clontarf 4 moved up to be the second best 4th team in the province, overtaking YMCA.
Greystones 1 - 3rd - (Pos in league - 52 (2017 - 40)) - Batting Rating 118 - Bowling Rating 106 - RpO for 3.64 - RpO against 5.07 - Youth %age (by appearances) 19.3%
On paper, 2018 was a successful season for Greystones. A solid third place in the division, that probably should have been higher. Promotion would have been theirs if the home match against Clontarf had been won, although as it turned out a Rana Asad blitz Tarf knock off 141 in less than 16 overs, with Asad hitting an incredible 105*. So although that a reversal of that one result would have meant the teams swapping places in the final league table, Greystones probably don't have too much to complain about. The one doubt is that at the cub requested to be demoted several divisions for the 2018 season, and 52nd was the team's lowest league position since they finished 90th in the club's league debut in 2012. Three players made the Team of the Year. Manpreet Singh has been one of the legends of cricket in Leinster over the past eight seasons, and is one of only three players to have scored over 2500 runs and taken more than 250 wickets (the others being North County's Eddie Richardson, and Laois' Usama Raees). His league contribution for Greystones in 2018 was 240 runs at 40 and 22 wickets at 12.14 (the most wickets ever for Greystones 1 in a league season), picking up his third TotY award. Aidan Longstaff made the team as wicketkeeper with the most dismissals, and Michael Kirk showed his quality with his second award, after making the Division 4 team in 2016. The ex-YMCA player is now only 13 runs away from the 1000 run/50 wicket for Greystones (in all cricket), which would make him the fifth player, after Manpreet Singh, Sinto John, Eoin Lenehan and Philip Jonker. His return this year in the league was 321 runs at 53.5 and 14 wickets at 15.86. Also worthy of mention were Harry Kirk (229 at 32.71) and Stephen Roughan (14 wickets at 16.64). Greystones have now slipped to the 27th best 1st team in the province, down from 23rd in 2017.
DLR County 2 - 4th - (Pos in league - 53 (2017 - N/A)) - Batting Rating 89 - Bowling Rating 105 - RpO for 4.40 - RpO against 4.10 - Youth %age (by appearances) 0%
DLR County 2 was pretty much exactly the same team as Dundrum 2 in 2017, and so perhaps it is not surprising that they came 53rd in the league, after Dundrum 2 finished 54, 52, 53, 54 in the four preceding seasons. That position should improve as the merger between Dundrum and Cabinteely develops, but for now the only ex Cabinteely player who contributed to the season was Sandeep Shahdeo. The season started well, with wins over Adamstown, and Ringcommons (twice), but whereas the first five games brought four wins, the last six only saw one more. The win at home to Adamstown in late April was the highlight of the season, as runs from Sandeep Shahdeo (34) and Piyush Sharma (54) saw DLR County set a reasonable early season total of 173. Eight bowlers then took wickets (with Rahul Balabchandran taking 3-30) as Adamstown fell 50 runs short. That was as good as it got for DLR though, and in the end, not a single player excelled enough to be selected on our representative team. Division 7 legend (check out the records section above) Jinto Mathew once again led the way. He was the leading run scorer with 193 runs at 17.55 (a stat that highlights the struggles of the team's batting) and also the leading run scorer with 20 wickets at 14.05. To a certain extent it was a one man team though. No one else got more than ten wickets - Rahul Balachandran (10 at 23) and Sanket Patil (10 at 15.70) got to the mark exactly.
Sandyford 1 - 5th - (Pos in league - 54 (2017 - 49)) - Batting Rating 85 - Bowling Rating 106 - RpO for 4.09 - RpO against 4.61 - Youth %age (by appearances) 0%
The 2018 season pretty much encapsulates Sandyford's recent history. A strong bowling side making up for inadequacies in the batting; no youth players (a worrying stat copied by the majority of sides in Division 7), and a slide down the leagues. This was the fifth season in a row that Sandyford 1 have failed to rise up the league table (one of six sides who have done this, the others being Leinster 5, Malahide 4, Malahide 5, North County 3 and Pembroke 5). The highlight of the season saw Sandyford pile up one if the biggest victories of the season, when they beat Dublin University 210 runs. When Sandyford were at 116-7, such a victory probably didn't look likely. But then entered Sandyford's star for the season, Mohammad Abdullah. Abdullah played a small part in the 2017 season, but from the moment he entered this match against Dublin University he became their main player. In this match he scored 93* from only 54 balls to take Sandyford to 294-9, before taking 3-21 as the students collapsed to 84 all out. Overall he scored 192 runs at 27.43 and took 24 wickets at 9.96. This was the highest number of wickets taken in a Sandyford 1 season since the great Anto Burke took 27 in 2011 and earned him a place on the Team of the Year. He was joined there by Vinay Iqbal who took 15 wickets at an incredible 7.78. Shiyas Basheer took 10 wickets at 21.4 in a supporting role.
Ringcommons 1 - 6th (Pos in league - 55 (2017 - 53)) - Batting Rating 124 - Bowling Rating 89 - RpO for 4.25 - RpO against 5.13 - Youth %age (by appearances) 8.1%
Something of an odd season for Ringcommons 1 - at least when looked at it from the outside. A collection of some of the most talented players at this level, playing on one of the best grounds, but giving two walkovers (against Greystones and Adamstown) and not even playing Sandyford. Purely on the pitch, they only played nine games, and we rank them as the 4th best side in the division based on what happened inside the rope. By only playing nine games, there was little opportunity for players to fill their boots with Brendan Moore being the only player to pass 200 runs with 283 at 35.38. Three bowlers ended up with double figures in the wickets column, but apart from Andrew Moore's 19 wickets at 15.68, Brendan Moore (11 at 21.64) and Barry White (11 at 22.36) were expensive. And despite the team finishing two places lower than their record high of 53rd in 2017, it was still much higher than they have ever finished in the league.
Dublin Univ 2- 7th (Pos in league - 56 (2017 - 65)) - Batting Rating 71 - Bowling Rating 67 - RpO for 4.28 - RpO against 4.66 - Youth %age (by appearances) 0%
As this column always points out, you always need to look at the bigger picture before judging how well a season went. On the surface, it looks like Dublin University 2 had a shocker of a season. They lost all six games that counted (although they did beat North Kildare 2 in a match that was scrubbed) and didn't really look like winning any of them. But against that, it was the highest level that the students have competed at in living memory - in 2012 they were playing at a level nearly two divisions lower. Two debutants led the way with bat and ball - Hector Chamberlain hit 131 runs at 43.67, and Srikanth Venkata Subramanian took 8 wickets at 25.63.
North Kildare 2 - 8th (Pos in league - 57 (2017 - 52)) - Batting Rating 72 - Bowling Rating 54 - RpO for 4.15 - RpO against 6.09 - Youth %age (by appearances) 0%
A tough year for North Kildare has already been raked over a bit, and as already mentioned in these reviews, they look like coming back stronger in 2018. In terms of numbers playing, North Kildare did ok in 2018. As a rule of thumb, a healthy club will have 16 players per team in the club. So in order to have four teams, North Kildare should have 64 players - they in fact had 72, 10 more than in 2017. Much of the problem though was that of the 62 players in 2017, 18 didn't play in 2018, and four of those played a big role in the 1st team. Against that 20 players made their debut for the club in 2018, so the narrative of a club being in trouble is wide of the mark.
The full Division 7 batting averages can be found here, whilst the bowling averages are here