North County Ease into Semi-Final
A half-century from Jonno Andrews and five wickets from Cian Mulvaney eased North County to a 101-run victory over Railway Union in the IBI Corporate Finance quarter-final.
Asked to bat first, Malcolm Nofal (48) and Jamie Grassi (39) recovered from the early loss of Niall McGovern to put County in a strong position of 97/3 at drinks.
Eddie Richardson, and more notably, Jonno Andrews played some lovely shots as they pushed the North County total up towards 200.
Richardson fell for 36, not before planting a six onto the adjoining bowling green, but Ali came in and smashed some quick runs too, including a glorious straight six of his own.
Andrews (52) was the last wicket to fall when Jackson bowled him, but the damage had been done and North County had scored 228/7 off their allocation.
For Railway to chase down the large total, they needed Kenny Carroll to go big, unfortunately he fell third ball LBW to Richardson.
When Sheridan backed this up, taking the wicket of Hafeez in the 2nd, Railway were 3/2 and staring down the barrel.
This brought young Alex Stiles and Eoin Barron together and they played their shots. Unfortunately, on a pitch that was increasingly keeping low, the required run rate was always rising throughout the chase.
Barron did play two lovely reverse sweeps off Nofal in his top score of 43.
However, the Railway innings was dominated by Cian Mulvaney. In the 22 nd over he took two in two balls, pushing one through quicker for Grassi to stump Dhammika before Sultan was LBW.
In the 28 th Mulvaney went one better and took three wickets to ensure the victory. Mulvaney had 5 for 30 and in a flash, Railway were 106/9.
Ciaran Divney and Andrew Jackson refused to capitulate and put on 21 for the final wicket before Eddie Richardson tied up proceedings. He bowled Divney at the beginning of the 33rd over to seal a 101-run victory for North County.
IBI Corporate Finance Leinster Senior Cup Quarter Final
At Park Avenue;
North County 228/7 (Andrews 52, Nofal 48; Dhammika 3-27)
Railway Union 127 a/o 33.1 overs (Barron 43; Mulvaney 5-30)
North County won by 101 runs