This weekend all roads lead to Sydney Parade where the first major finals of the season take place. On Saturday four teams contest the LHK Insurance [Alan Murray] T20 League - the hosts Pembroke, Clontarf, Merrion and The Hills. In the first semi-final match Pembroke take on Merrion [10.30]. This is followed at 14.00 in the second match between Clontarf and The Hills. The final between the two winning sides is scheduled to start at 17.30
The four teams successively completed their preliminary rounds in the following order Pembroke [2], Merrion [4], Clontarf [5] and The Hills [6]. Merrion and Pembroke won five out of their six games, while Clontarf and The Hills four. But of course not too much can be read into the placings - although Merrion did beat Pembroke in their head-to-head and Clontarf had a big win against The Hills.
In terms of the teams / squads selected for the finals, both Pembroke and Merrion have players on the Irish U19 team. Merrion are also missing Patrick Tice who is unavailable. Clontarf have a full strength squad with David Delany returning after a hand injury that has kept him out of cricket for the past few weeks. Finally, The Hills are also a couple of regular players shy with Mark Donegan [also on Ireland U19 duty] and Mike Baumgart unavailable.
Who to look out for during the day? Lorcan Tucker [Pembroke] and Jamie Brown [Merrion] have both been in good form accumulating over 300 runs each. A little further down the table one finds Andrew Poynter [Clontarf] and Albert van der Serve [The Hills] with 273 and 239 runs respectively. But of course T20s can provide opportunities down the scoresheet for important contributions by individual players. No less than half the players in the top twenty places in the runs table for T20s are on show this weekend.
But of course it is the bowlers [who are often seen as cannon fodder in a format that favours the batter] who will ultimately determine the outcome of the day. Four good overs from an individual can be enough to turn a match. Each of the teams has a player in the top ten wicket takers this year - Paul Lawson / Pembroke [2nd], Islam Shariful / Clontarf [5th], Hamid Shah / The Hills [7th] and Jamie Brown / Merrion [8th]. But it is really the effectiveness of the bowling team as a unit that is crucial and in this regard it is interesting that [of those available] the four main bowlers from Clontarf have the best combined Runs Per Over rate with 6.38, closely followed by Pembroke 6.41 and Merrion 6.53. It is The Hills that is the outlier in this regard with rate of 7.49.
Of course statistics of past performances are only that - in the past. It could be someone quite unexpected that steps up and wins the competition for their club on Saturday.
Pembroke: Lawson P [C], Balbirnie J, Cutler N, Gupta S, Hoey B, Hopkins, R Lawson T, Mullen C, Tucker L [W], Tucker D, Balbirnie A, Tucker F.
Merrion: Dom Joyce [C], John Anderson, Jamie Brown, Vikas Dhiman, Bhavesh Lakohatia, Tom Stanton, Sean Stanton, R Allwright, Tyrone Kane, Michael Lewis, Nitin Sharma.
Clontarf: Joe Morrissey [C], Sameer Dutt, Declan Gallagher, Ropu Islam, Waqar Azmat, Bill Coghlan, Andrew Poynter, Conor Kelly, Robert Forrest, John Mooney, Brad Barnes [W], David Delany, Andrew Vincent.
The Hills: Max Sorensen [C], Cormac McLoughlin-Gavin, Albert Van der Merwe, Sean Terry, Hamid Shah, Ryan Cartwright, Naseer Shoukat, Tomás Rooney Murphy, Luke Clinton, Yaqoob Ali, Andy Kavanagh
A final point - Cricket Leinster hope to be able to stream the day's events from Sydney Parade so if you cannot make it down you shoudl check this out as well as on the Match Centre and Social Media. Further details to follow on the day.