Harry Tector fresh from his exploits against Merrion.
Weather permitting [and it certainly hasn’t been kind so far this season] we should have a full round of Premier fixtures today. The forecast isn’t too bad if the grounds are playable after the rain yesterday. A number of matches in other Divisions have already been called off over the weekend.
The four Premier games [all starting at 12.00] are as follows:
Merrion v North County
YMCA v Phoenix
Leinster v Pembroke
Clontarf v The Hills
The Match of the Day [video highlights] sponsored by Cairn Homes will be taken from the Leinster v Pembroke game. We will endeavour to provide coverage from other games but may be reliant in some cases on twitter feed from the ground. So if you are attending and there is no Live Scores coming please let the Match Centre know what is going on.
The first games sees Merrion face off against North County. Pressure will be on Merrion to recover from their narrow defeat last weekend v YMCA. Their first order of business will be to reduce the number of wides. The match sees the return of Vikas Dhiman who is already in good form having scored 80 for the 2nd XI v Phoenix IIs. North County will no doubt remember him from the Leinster Senior cup match last year when he made 93* from 74 balls. This is obviously North County’s first game so there is no form to go on. The squad is similar to last season and the team today sees the introduction of Malcolm Nofal [Overseas Player from South Africa] who is left arm spin / top order bat and Sean Kingston a seamer from Australia. But two familiar names are missing from the team sheet for today - Eddie and Terry Richardson.
North County: Niall McGovern [C], Jamie Grassi [W], Malcolm Nofal, Jonno Andrews, Tomas Sheil, Adam Coughlan, Andrew Sheridan, Conor Sheil, Sean Kingston, Cian Mulvanny, Anto Mooney.
Merrion: Dom Joyce [C], Patrick Tice [W], John Anderson, Tyrone Kane, Tom Stanton, Jack Carty, Poonish Mehra, Michael Lewis, JJ Walsh, Max Neville, Vikas Dhiman.
YMCA are the second team to have had an outing this year and will go into their first home game full of confidence from their win over Merrion. It is the same team that lines out and it has already shown considerable grit in forging a victory from an unfavourable position. Jarred Barnes, who had a very good all round game last, and Bobby Gamble will lead the attack in the absence of James Parkinson.
There are a number of new faces on the Phoenix team so it will be interesting to see how they go. It looks like they line up at close to full strength.
YMCA: Jack Tector [C], Oliver Gunning, Simi Singh, Harry Tector, Sam Murphy [W], Bobby Gamble, Jarred Barnes, Padraic Flanagan, Asher Abbassi, Aviral Shukla and Jarred Barnes.
Phoenix: Tom Anders [C], Richie Lawrence, Alex Karvelas, Rory Anders, Ian Anders, Reinhardt Strydom, Ben White, Brad Kneebone, Gordy Miller, Sine Tsotsa [W], Fletcher Coutts
Leinster [the current champions] take on Pembroke who ended up in the relegation zone last season - but did not have to play-off against second placed OCD2 side Trinity. But it is a new season and past form has little relevance. Leinster have one debutant in Andrew Clough who is a leg spinner and bat from the UK but will miss Craig Mallon and Hugh MacDonnell who have yet to return to duty. The Pembroke team has a familiar ring to it with three sets of brothers. Alex Ridley [overseas player from New Zealand] makes his debut but they go into the match without Andrew Balbirnie, Lorcan Tucker [playing for Trinity] and Ryan Hopkins, key players from last season.
Pembroke: Tucker F [C], Tucker D, Lawson P, Lawson T, Little J, Balbirnie J, Hogan D, Garth J, Ridley A, Hoey B, Hoey G.
Leinster: G Dockrell [C], G Delaney, D Coad, F O'Sullivan, J. Carroll, A. Clough, M. Hogan, I. O'Herlihy [W], C. Janick, S. Bahadur, B. Azhar
Perhaps they most interesting fixture of the day will be between Clontarf and The Hills. These were the two standout teams for most of last season and it will be interesting to see how they go this year. Clontarf look to be even stronger with overseas player Obus Pinear who was such a force in the NCU compensating for the loss of John Mooney and Brad Barnes. Though not included in today’s team Eoghan Delany has also been registered for the season. Paul Ryan also returns to the fold. Bill Coughlan is unavailable for today’s game. Assuming they have their full team available Clontarf will be strong again this season.
The Hills will miss Ryan Carpenter [overseas from last season] but should have enough seam bowling in their locker to take advantage of early season conditions. Nicolaas Pretorius returns to the colours for The Hills, other than that the team is made up of familiar names.
Clontarf: Joe Morrissey [C], Declan Gallagher, Shariful Islam, Waqar Azmat, Obus Pienaar, Andrew Poynter, David Delany, Robert Forrest [W], Conor Kelly, Sameer Dutt, Paul Ryan
The Hills: Max Sorensen [C], Mark Donegan [W], Albert van der Merwe, Sean Terry, Nicolaas Pretorius., Tomas Rooney Murphy, Naseer Shoukat, Andrew Kavanagh, Ryan Tobin, Luke Clinton, Killian Everard.