Lightning Strikes - Update Vol 1

We’re sure by now that you’ve all heard about the upcoming ‘RSA Inter-Provincial Series’ and that you’re looking forward to the action!

Here’s a bit of information about the Series and your team, the Leinster Lightning. We hope to keep you updated as to all the happenings around the squad on a regular basis through this post on the Cricket Leinster website.

The Series itself is comprised of 3 competitions, namely the RSA Inter-Provincial Championship (IPC), a three-day competition, the RSA Inter-Provincial Cup (IP50), a 50 over competition and the RSA 20/20 Inter-Provincial Trophy (IP20).

All 3 competitions will be contested between your team, the Leinster Lightning, representing the Leinster Cricket Union, the Northern Knights representing the Northern Cricket Union and the North West Warriors representing the North West Cricket Union.

The IPC and IP50 competitions consist of 6 games each, with each team playing each other team home and away, whilst the 20/20 competition will be played over 3 days, one in each union. Please see the table below for details all of the fixtures.

Right - now that you understand the formats, let’s fill you in on the Leinster Lightning.

The team is managed by Mark Jones, coached by Trent Johnston, and assistant coaches Jeremy Bray and Albert Van der Merwe. The selection panel comprises of senior Irish selector Brian MacNeice (Chairman), Greg Molins and Jeff Short along with the aforementioned Coach and Manager.  Ed Wyeth provides the administration assistance.

The selectors have met on a number of occasions over the past month. After much debate, an initial training squad of 22 players was chosen and registered with Cricket Ireland which the selectors felt combined a strong blend of youth and experience and which rewarded significant achievement over the past few seasons. We’re confident we have the players to bring home the silverware in all 3 formats!

The 12 man team for the first IP50 match in the Hills on Monday 6^th May against the Northern Knights can be seen here: http://www.cricketleinster.ie/news/lightning-name-team-for-first-match.

The energy and enthusiasm in the squad has been brilliant with Coach Trent having already instilled a great work-ethic and feeling of pride in selection amongst the guys. We’ve already had 2 excellent training sessions at YMCA and The Hills with a 3^rd session unfortunately falling foul of the weather. Many thanks to both YMCA and The Hills for accommodating us.

As we represent the entire province of Leinster, it is our intention to take these training sessions as far and wide as possible. If your club would like to be involved with this, please contact Ed Wyeth on edwyeth@gmail.com.

The RSA Inter-Provincial Series was launched at College Park on Tuesday with the 3 captains, coaches, Irish coach Phil Simmons and Phillip Smith, the CEO of RSA in attendance. The media coverage was great, with at least 5 newspapers as well as RTE and the BBC getting involved and giving it valuable column inches and camera time.

So onwards to our first match on Monday! The game starts in The Hills at 10:45 and there is no admission charge. It would be great to see as much support for the team as possible as we get our campaign underway. The guys are really focussed on this game and determined to bring glory to the Union.

Thanks to everyone who’s showed an interest so far and please continue to spread the word. You can follow us on twitter at @LCU_Lightning for up to date news, pictures and results and please give us any feedback and queries which you may have. It would be great if the clubs could post this on their website, noticeboards and social media and continue to post information about the Lightning throughout the season. We hope to have posters out to the clubs soon as well.

Please do not hesitate to email Ed (edwyeth@gmail.com) any feedback you may have.

Yours in Sport

The Leinster Lightning

#lightningstrikes

Details of 2013 Fixtures:

Starting Times: IPC 11am; IP50 10:45; IP20 First Match 11am; Second Match 3:30pm