Ireland Development squad an excellent innovation

ALTERING the format of the AIB Senior Interprovincial Championship this season has certainly been a success. In particular, the establishment of the Ireland Development squad has been an excellent innovation, and the young team's lifting of the title at the first attempt was quite an achievement.

Admittedly, the 10-overs-each decide against Malahide on Sunday can hardly be compared with a full match, but even so, the determination and will to win of the Development team was apparent. The Development side (would their team manager, historian Michael Halliday, refer to them as Young Irelanders?) won another of their matches - against the Northern Cricket Union - in similar circumstances, but really, that's what inclement weather does for, or rather, to cricket.

Halliday and his squad left for their three-match English tour yesterday, and it will be interesting to see how they fare against the Club and Grounds sides of Lancashire today, Yorkshire tomorrow and Derbyshire on Thursday. An extremely busy week finishes with the AIB Interprovincial Championship match at the Mardyke on Saturday, a game which will wrap up the series.

With the squad to travel to the ICC tournament in Malaysia next spring to be selected shortly, the members of the Development squad have much to play for over the next few days. Many of them will be in with a really serious shout, especially given that there are only four uncapped players in the party Stephen Donnelly, Keith Banks, John Davy and Ronan O'Reilly.

Meanwhile, suggestions that Leinster were set to make their exit from the Royal Liver Irish Senior Cup happily proved to be greatly exaggerated last Saturday. That was a very fine win against Waringstown, and the final - at home on September 6th to Brigade - will be awaited with interest.

And of course it wasn't Leinster's Johnny Byrne who took three Leinster wickets for the Development X1 at Malahide before rain resulted in the 10-overs match on Sunday, as your correspondent stated here yesterday; it was Pembroke's John Davy. Mea culpa for such a slip it must have been the curse of Rathmines afflicting me.

Congratulations to Cork County, who recently defeated Waterford Jordans to win the Munster Minor Cup for the first time. Their convincing 99-run victory was helped greatly by a fine innings of 62 from skipper Dermot Giltinan.

The Leprechauns had two good "away" wins over last weekend, defeating Bagenalstown by a sizeable margin on Saturday, before almost coming unstuck the following day against Mount Juliet. The home side were skittled for 88. as Andre Botha took 3 for 16, and Trent Johnston had a hat-trick in his three for five; the Leprechauns then lost seven wickets before going on to win.

I'm grateful to Gavin Craig, chairman of the Irish Cricket Union. for giving me three Northern Ireland newspapers - The News Letter Sunday Life and Coleraine Times - all of which included several pages of cricket coverage; this was in response to my comments here last week regarding the space devoted to the game in the main-line Scottish papers.

Point taken. All the same, the newspapers in question do not circulate on the whole island.

As I wrote last week, we're trying to be constructive. What is needed to promote Irish cricket aggressively is an overall marketing strategy for the entire island, of which the media, naturally, would be a vital part.