It felt like the first day of summer. A full round of RSA Leinster Senior Cup matches played and no mention of Duckworth Lewis anywhere.
The results from the first round went pretty much according to league position. There were wins for North County [against Leinster], The Hills [against Balbriggan], Railway Union [against Rush] and Pembroke [against Terenure]. In the end there were comfortable margins of victory in all the games although The Hills, in particular, are indebted to a century from skipper Nazeer Shoukat who helped them recover from 48/4 [Shoukat shared in a 200 run partnership with Daryll Calder who made 85*]. Rush also made a promising start to their game and at one stage were 190/4 with 20 overs to go before collapsing to 213 all out. Rush will have been disappointed not to have produced a more competitive total [or at least found some way to stop Pat Collins who had another memorable day with four wickets and 120*. He must be comfortably the best fifth change bowler in Leinster]
Leinster’s torrid start to the season continued and facing a massive 300 total against North County [Adam Coughlan 100] they were never really in the hunt.
The final match, between Pembroke and Terenure always looked like being the closest contest. And so it proved. Against a varied Terenure attack Pembroke struggled to 223 [with six players scoring between 20 and 35 and thanks to 39 extras] which at the end of the first innings really did not look like enough. The match turned on a spell by Barry McCarthy in which he took out three of the Terenure top order. Tom Fisher battled to a 50 but there simply wasn’t enough depth in the Terenure batting to provide the support needed.
So it is all up to Clontarf [against Phoenix] to give the lie to the league placings – though in their current form they will certainly start as favourites for their postponed tie in Caste Avenue next weekend
A maiden undefeated half century from 14 year old Conor O’Gorman [68*] was the one bright spot of the day for Leinster in their defeat against Trinity in D2.
Conor O'Gorman at the end of a memorable day when he scored his maiden senior half-century for Leinster CC against Trinity. Thanks to Pete Johnston for the photo.