NCU Preview July 5th 2008

The Section Two season moves into the month of July and the teams will be hoping that the recent weather that has disrupted the last fortnights play clears up with some crucial matches coming up. One team not being affected by the rain at present are the Division leaders Ballymena, who dodged the showers sufficiently last weekend to record victories on both Friday and Saturday. Both of their matches required Duckworth/Lewis calculations and indeed the Friday fixture with Dundrum was a close run thing given that the Braidmen only reached the par score with four balls to spare, William Montgomery falling one run short of his half century. Things were a touch more comfortable for the leagues unbeaten side on Saturday when David Kennedy with 79 not out led his team to 180-5 off 45 overs. Laurelvale were game but not really in contention, falling 46 runs short thanks to seven wickets shared between Simon McDowell and Michael Glass.

This weekend Ballymena have an away match at Holywood and will be looking to keep their great run going. Comparisons will no doubt start to be made with the unbeaten Derriaghy side of 2006……. Holywood go into that match with Ballymena on the back of quite a heavy defeat at home to Muckamore in another match badly reduced by the rain. The away side must have produced a superb bowling display at Seapark to restrict Holywood to 128 in 49.2 overs, despite 51 from Simon Bond, below. Duckworth/Lewis decided that Muckamore required the fairly gettable total of 83 off 30 overs and this was reached comfortably with the loss of only one wicket and five overs to spare. Muckamore will be hoping for more of the same this weekend as they are on the road again, this time travelling to the Mall to play Armagh.

Dundrum might have lost their match with Ballymena on Friday, but the big one at the Meadow was the greatly anticipated visit of Downpatrick on the Saturday, with a lot more than just local pride at stake given that the team were both together in the second relegation position. The home team gathered at competitive score of 177 on what was apparently a slow outfield and was largely down to a knock of 74 from opener Gavin McNerlin. Downpatrick were never really in the hunt in reply and Dundrum ended up winning comfortably by 47 runs with wickets shared around to spark wild celebrations from the Village crowd. They will no doubt be hoping for some more of the same this weekend when they have another County Down derby against high-flying Saintfield.

Downpatrick are now getting in desperate need of points, but will find them difficult to find at the Ballygomartin Road against a Woodvale side still sitting in second place despite rain having the final say on them last weekend when the match with Lurgan was washed out. Laurelvale also sit on eight points in the table, level with Downpatrick and ahead of Armagh but still requiring some wins as they enter the second half of the season.

After putting up a decent display against Ballymena last time out, Charles McCrum, right, will be hoping for steady improvement this weekend at Pollock Park when they take on Lurgan in a County Armagh derby. Lurgan haven’t played since a tight win at Dundrum in the middle of June so might be a touch rusty, but if the weather is good I expect a high scoring game. Last weekends other game was a bit of a thriller that went down to the wire as Saintfield and Armagh shared over 400 runs at the Demesne and pretty much avoided the rain in doing so. Armagh elected to bat on an excellent strip and were tied down throughout by tight bowling, but the patience of professional Charudatta Kulkarni shone through as he made the most of any bad balls to record his first century in the NCU, a monumental knock of 112 that included 16 boundaries and 2 sixes. This made the lion’s share of Armagh’s 201-8 but immediately the score looked below par as Ricky Owens and Thomas Stewart began to launch the ball to all parts, the captain reaching 62 before being castled by David Bullick. To their credit, Armagh showed a bit more fight than usual this season but still came short as a disciplined innings from Ray McCavery all but seen his team home by four wickets. Saintfield sit pretty with 5 wins in joint third position while

Armagh still remain rock bottom, but can at least look forward to the visit of Muckamore on Saturday given that they were Armagh’s only victims to date this season. Can Armagh do the double and spark hopes of another great escape?  This Saturday’s full fixture card in the Section reads:

Armagh v Muckamore
Woodvale v Downpatrick
Dundrum v Saintfield
Holywood v Ballymena
Lurgan v Laurelvale

Sunday also has the potential for fun and games as five Section Two teams find themselves in Twenty/20 action. Woodvale and Downpatrick are in with the big boys in the Metal Technology Twenty/20 Cup while Laurelvale, Saintfield and Muckamore all travel to McComb Park Dunmurry fresh from winning their group sections of the Shield and ready for potentially a thrilling finals day. The draw pits Laurelvale v Muckamore and Dunmurry v Saintfield in the semis with the two winners head to head in the final at around 5:30pm. I wouldn’t like to make predictions but I hope there are plenty of spare cricket balls around!