The 2017 Hanley Energy Inter-Provincial season comes to a close tomorrow when the Lightning take on the Northern Knights in a 50-over match in Rathmines.
It’s been another season to remember for Albert van der Merwe’s men, having clinched the 3-day Championship crown in Clontarf earlier this week to secure a hat-trick of titles for the third season running and making it 13 trophies since the Inter-Pro’s were relaunched back in 2013.
Tomorrow’s match is a dead-rubber in that results elsewhere last month ensured the 50-over trophy would stay in Leinster and with that in mind, as well as with an eye on Ireland’s meeting with the West Indies in Stormont next week, the selectors have rested several players, most notably Ed Joyce, Andrew Balbirnie and Eddie Richardson. The youngsters chosen to replace them are David Delany, who impressed with his pace in Clontarf as well as Gareth Delany at his home club and Rush’s Stephen Doheny.
Some off-field news is that two of our selectors are stepping down from selection duties after five years of service. We’d like to thanks both Greg Molins who has chaired the selection panel for a number of seasons now, as well as the team manager, Mark Jones, for all their years of selection service – the time and effort is very much appreciated.
When announcing that he was stepping down, Greg Molins congratulated and thanked all the players and staff involved with the Lightning the past five years and acknowledged the huge commitment and effort from all concerned which brought such success to the province.
Details of the recruitment of their replacements will be announced in due course.
The full squad for tomorrow is as follows:
John Anderson (c) (Merrion)
Peter Chase (Malahide)
David Delany (Clontarf)
Gareth Delany (Leinster)
George Dockrell (v/c) (Dublin University / Leinster)
Stephen Doheny (Rush)
Kevin O’Brien (Railway Union)
Tyrone Kane (Merrion)
Simi Singh (YMCA)
Jack Tector (YMCA)
Sean Terry (The Hills)
Lorcan Tucker (w/k) (Pembroke)