Cricket: A small group of men in their mid-20s, one wearing a soccer shirt, gathered on an apartment balcony overlooking Leinster Cricket Club's Rathmines ground last Saturday afternoon. With beer cans in hand, they were pointing to the goings on of the LHW 20/20 Cup and explaining to each what they thought was happening.
Merrion captain Damian Poder then hit one of his huge sixes over midwicket, not far from where the lads were watching.
They were visibly enthralled by the action and during a brief conversation with them, they told me they had never previously seen a live game of cricket and were keen to know when the next one was.
"This is not how I thought cricket was," said one of them. "Where are the cucumber sandwiches?"
Apart from never having seen a cucumber sandwich at a cricket match in my life, the point the young man was making to me was clear. The 20/20 form of the game may be "just not cricket" for some of the more traditional supporters in this country but whatever it is, it has the potential to have a positive influence within the broad confines of a sport that is often accused of exclusivity.
The real challenge for cricket in Ireland is to entice support from outside the traditional pool and encourage those lads down from the balcony overlooking Leinster CC and into the ground itself. Maybe even to pick up the willow and have a go themselves.
While Saturday's 20/20 finals day did not really bring in many people who were complete strangers to Irish cricket, it certainly has the potential to do so and had the weather been a little more kind, I have no doubt that it would have done.
Nobody is seriously suggesting that 20/20 cricket should take over from its 50-over relative as the norm, but it must be supported as a vehicle of enticing new players and supporters.
Come for the razzmatazz, the Leinster Cricket Union should be saying, and then stay for all the other products that we have on offer.
After the undoubted success of this year's competition, driven forward through the passion of a small number of individuals and sponsors, the LHW 20/20 Cup must now be given full LCU support.
It was encouraging to hear LCU president Frank Whelan pledge that support on Saturday and hopefully next year the union will see fit to declare finals day a closed date for all cricket in the province.
As part of the ongoing series of unusual scoring in junior cricket, the junior branch honorary secretary of the LCU Michael Sharp has been in touch. Urvin Desai's 199, scored recently for Civil Service, is not a junior record, I am told.
The same score was achieved by Clifford Costello for The Hills thirds in 2001 and there have been three individual scores over 200 in the last 23 years since Sharp took up his position.
Alan Ramsay (for Pembroke sixths in 1992) holds the record with 211 while Michael Murphy hit 210 not out during a Senior 2 Cup match in 1989. Also, Benny Doheny made 203 for Rush fourths in 2002. Indeed, the lads in Civil Service should have known that Urvin's 199 was not a record seeing as two of the double hundreds (Ramsay's and Murphy's) were scored against them. Also, in the case of Ramsay's fine knock, Civil Service actually won the match by successfully chasing 291 to win in 45 overs.
If you have any more wonderful feats from the world of junior cricket, don't keep them to yourself.
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