The second round of the LHK Insurance [Alan Murray] T20 competition takes place today in what promises to be bright sunshine. The first round of matches saw a number of surprises with D2 teams emerging victorious over their Premier opponents in a number of cases. Balbriggan have emerged as leader of the pack with two wins out of two. They have home advantage today and a good chance of cementing their passage through to the knockout stage.

The withdrawal of North Kildare has complicated the points system [as well as the scheduling of matches]. The model for determining placings is that all teams are capable [if they win all their matches] of reaching 12 points. This means that those teams due to play North Kildare have only five games but each is worth 2.4 points. For the remainder it is two points per game. This, of course, makes it more difficult to predict how many wins a team will need to get through to the QFs.

Going into Round 2 [and this is an unofficial table] Balbriggan, Clontarf, The Hills and Munster Heat are all in strong positions. On the other hand Merrion, Leinster, Railway Union and Terenure will need to make a move today if they are to have any chance of getting to the play-off spots. How many points are likely to be needed to qualify. What is the breakpoint between the top eight and the bottom six. The basic calculation is that 3 wins out of five [Munster, Clontarf, Merrion, Pembroke, Malahide, Terenure] will bring 7.2 points. Well above the mid-point. But would 4.8 points be enough. And for those with a full complement of matches - three wins with six points shot due enough, but what of four or five points. There are many permutations. We will know a lot more by this evening.

Latest official table with NRR

The venues for today games:

Phoenix Park [Phoenix, Munster, Clontarf]

Sydney Parade [Pembroke, Rush, Leinster]

Inch [North County, YMCA, Railway U]

Jack Harper Memorial [Balbriggan, Merrion, The Hills]

Terenure [Terenure, Malahide]

First series of matches start 10.30 [except in Terenure at 11.00], and then 14.00 and 17.30.

Tomorrow we have the QFs of the Leinster Senior [IBI Corporate Finance] Cup. Further details on the state of Cup Competitions is set out below.

Squads for today:

Phoenix: Tom Anders ©, Reinhardt Strydom, Rory Anders, Richie Lawrence, Brad Kneebone, Fletcher Coutts, Ben White, Adam Chester, Gordy Millar, Sine Tsotsa, Dave Vernon.

Merrion [from]: T Stanton [C], P Tice, J Anderson, J Carty, P Mehta, M Lewis, J Hitchcock, S Stanton, B Bhatal, D Langford Smith, B Lakhotia, N Shanker.

The Hills: Max Sorensen [C], Mark Donegan [W], Albert van der Merwe, Sean Terry, Nicolaas Pretorius, Tomas Rooney Murphy, Andrew Kavanagh, Harry Archer, Luke Clinton, Daya Singh, Nazeer Shoukat.

Balbriggan: Duane Harper, Connor Fletcher, Adrian Harper, Farooq Nasr, Timycen Maruma, Nathan Rooney, Adam Keefe, Kashif Ali, Abdul Samad, Tariq Faheem, Emad Uddin

Clontarf [from] Joe Morrissey, Declan Gallagher, Obus Pienaar, David Delany, Robert Forrest [W], Sameer Dutt, Bill Coghlan, Andrew Pointer, Shane O’Brien, Faisal Zaman, Mark Collier, Andrew Vincent, Shariful Islam

Rush: Neil Rock (C/WK), Stephen Doheny , Conor Armstrong , Saadat (Tipu) Gull, Allan Eastwood , Daniel Coffey , Aaron McGuire, Nathan McGuire, Shahid Iqbal, Sean Monks & Daniel Thorne

North County [from]: Niall McGovern [C}, , Jamie Grassi, Malcolm Nofal, Jonno Andrews, Eddie Richardson, Safdar Ali, Andrew Sheridan, Tomás Sheil, Terry Richardson, Adam Coughlan, Craig May, Sean Kingston.