Photo: Finton McAllister who will be in action for Malahide v Strabane today.
All eyes today will be on the semi-finals of the Irish Senior Cup and the National Cup. In the former the Leinster sides - Pembroke and The Hills - have to contend with highly fancied NCU sides. Pembroke have the more difficult task away to Waringstown, currently ranked the top side in Ireland and leading the NCU Premier Division. Pembroke travel with a strong squad with David Murphy and Josh Little available to open the bowling and complement what is a strong and varied spin attack. They will certainly need all the pace and guile to counter the a Waringstown batting line-up that includes in form players Adam Dennison, James McCollum, James Hall and Greg Thompson.
The Hills probably have slightly the easier of the draw in that they are at home and Instonian’s form this year has been patchy to say the least. Of course the same might be said of The Hills whose challenge for the RCD1 title faded rather early. But The Hills have played well in cup competitions, winning the IBI Corporate Finance Leinster Senior Cup and getting to the final day of the LHK Insurance T20s. But if they are to win they will have to cope with Nikolai Smith who is currently the top scorer in the NCU with over 700 runs.
In the National Cup Malahide take on NCU Division II team Derriaghy. Malahide will be hoping that they can take their good recent form in the league [where they are chasing the promotion play-off spot in D2] into the all-Ireland competition. And they certainly have a good chance of getting to the final as Derriaghy’s league form is not great. But form may not count for all that much in the semi-final of a cup.
In the second match Terenure also have home advantage and take on Strabane, the only NW team left in either all-Ireland competition. This will prove a difficult encounter for Terenure against a team that is currently lying second in the NW Championship [D2] and pushing for promotion. It really all depends on which Terenure side turns up on the day. Mercurial, the team has put in some excellent performances this year interspersed by some truly awful ones.
The Leinster sides [as supplied] look to be at pretty much at full strength today.
The Hills:Max Sorensen [C], Mark Donegan [W], Cormac McLoughlin-Gavin, Sean Terry, Hamid Shah, Albert Van der Merwe, Ryan Cartwright, Tomás Rooney Murphy, Naseer Shoukat, Yaqoob Ali, Luke Clinton, Andrew Kavanagh.
Pembroke [from]: Lawson P [C], Balbirnie A, Balbirnie J, Cutler N, Garth JJ, Gupta S, Hogan D, Hopkins R, Lawson T, Little J, McDonough D, Mullen C, Murphy D, Tucker D, Tucker F, Tucker L [W]
Malahide: A Reynolds [C], J Newland, D O'Shea, S Davey, C Riches, A Muntha, P Chase , M Hingston, D O'Halloran, N Boyne, F McAllister [W]
We will try to keep you up to date with what is happening in these matches but even pre-Brexit getting news from NI can be a hit and miss affair.