Review of the season - RSA Division 2

How the league was won - Other leagues may have been tight, the top of Division 2 was anything but. With the unique arrangement of Dublin University playing seven games, they were the team to set the early target for the others to chase.

When they lost their first three matches (including Pembroke and Phoenix it has to be said), it looked as if the students would be relegation candidates, but a strong June - beating Old Belvedere 1, Leinster 2, Rush 1 and Cork County 1 - saw them post a respectable 55.03%. Probably not enough for promotion, but a worthy target for other teams to chase.

In all honesty, Pembroke were easily the best team in the league - they lost just the once on the league after a great performance from Phoenix's JH Steenkamp saw Phoenix victorious by 2 wickets in June. Apart from that though, Pembroke were rarely troubled and acheived promotion with ease, the gao between first and second being nearly 20%.

With all the teams apart from Phoenix regularly losing matches, the only question left was whether those from the province's oldest club could catch those from the second oldest club.  There were a few wobbles - a loss to Old Belvedere in July meant that there was to be some form of pressure on Phoenix over the last weeks of the season. Wins over Rush and Malahide eased any fears though, and in the end, promotion to Division 1 was acheived easily.

How dreams turned to nightmares -  The final league table looks tight. Four teams - Rush 1, Leinster 2, Malahide 1 and Cork County 1 were separated by only 12% - but in reality Malahide and Rush only flirted in the merest of ways with Division 3. 

Old Belvedere's proud history counted for nothing in 2012. They had been flirting with Division 3 for the last few years, but in the end were at least two victories from safety. There were vital wins against Rush 1, Phoenix 1 and Leinster 2,  but it wasn't enough.

Cork County's season was blighted by the weather with five of their home matches rained off. It placed more importance on their away matches, and despite wins in Malahide and Old Belvedere, survival came down to a winner takes all match against Leinster 2.

The Rathmines side had themselves recovered after a shaky start to the season, but when push came to shove, they proved victorious, as Hugh McDonnell hit 85 to send Cork County down.

Heroes with the willow - Rush's home matches had a large effect on the number of runs scored in Division 2. In total there were five centuries and eight 50's scored in Kenure in the five matches played - including Robin Kelly's 219 for Pembroke.  In all other matches (35) there were 28 fifties and three hundreds.

Fifteen players passed 200 Division 2 runs, and that list oozes quality. Four professionals (Jansen, Ellison, Beukes and Steenkamp), a couple of full internationals (Govan and Balbirnie), and nine other players who would rank highly in any list of the top players in the province.

 
Balbirnie ended up with the highest average of the top performers (409 at 68.17), Shaihid Iqbal of Rush was the highest scorer (528 at 44.00) and Eoghan Delany was worth an honourable mention with 413 at 59.00 

Hell for leather - Seven players passed twenty wickets, and each of those seven tells a tale. Paul Lawson swept all before him, winning the Division 2 bowling award by taking 25 wickes at 13.44. JH Steenkamp of Phoenix was even better though - his 25 cost only 12.32.

In third place was former (or maybe current) Ireland player, Allan Eastwood, whilst future international (?) Gareth Delany of Leinster came fourth with 22 wickets at 15.36. Behind him were a couple of veteran seamers, Calum Riches, the Malahide skipper and Rob Kenealy of Leinster. Finally, the 20 club is completed by Rush professional Lionel Jansen. 

A decent septet.

Days to remember -  It has already been mentioned, but it's difficult to ignore a double century. Much has been written of Robin Kelly's performance that day. His knocks in the league up to this point had been 0, 20, 2, 39 and 27, but the innings on that June Bank Holiday Monday was enough to earn him a plane ticket to Australia and the u19 World Cup.

Kelly opened the batting on that day, putting on 194 for the first wicket with Theo Lawson. Lawson only scored 46. That was the story all day for the Pembroke batsmen. To a certain extent they let Kelly score the runs. He was dismissed for 219 out of a total of 362, and set up the eventual league champions for a thumping win

Stat you may have missed - Not a single number 9, 10 or 11 scored more than 26 runs in an innings all season

Batting (Qualification - 100 runs)

Bowling (Qualifcation - 10 wickets)