The Irish Senior Cup - sponsored by Royal Liver - Ireland's only all-island cricket club competition, begins tomorrow with North County at home at The Nevitt to northern visitors Waringstown in the sole first-round match of the day. Elsewhere, the Lewis Traub-sponsored Leinster Senior 50-Overs League continues over the weekend, having had last Saturday's scheduled three-match start completely ruled out due to rain.

The opposing sides at The Nevitt will both inevitably be short of any meaningful match practice. Waringstown lost by six wickets to North Down last weekend, and this time around they will be without their Sri Lankan professional Pulashti Guratne, ruled out by the (bizarre) rules of the competition.

North County are captained by John Andrews this season, with wicket-keeper Dara Armstrong the vice-captain. The team will also be strengthened by the arrival from The Hills of international seamer Paul Mooney.

The Waringstown line-up includes former international all-rounder Garfield Harrison, as well as Jonathan Bushe, who was bypassed by the national selectors in favour of new wicket-keeper Gerard Brophy for Ireland's pathetic performance against Shropshire at Castle Avenue last Tuesday. The side is captained by Alan Waite.

Unusually, the second round of the Royal Liver Cup, to be played on Saturday May 20th, will bring four northern clubs to Leinster, as Donemana, Limavady, North Down and Ballymena all travel to take on YMCA, The Hills, Phoenix and Malahide, respectively.

Meanwhile, Clontarf, away to Leinster in the league on Saturday, have named two newcomers in their team; Australian all-rounder Mark Jones and Ally McIntosh, a Scot. Also included in the team is Des McCann, who has rejoined Clontarf after a sojourn with CYM. Ronan O'Reilly is Clontarf's captain this season, although his rugby could interfere with his cricket, given Clontarf RFC's impending AIB League Division One relegation play-off.

That debacle at Castle Avenue cost the Lurgan and Waringstown clubs the opportunity to host top representative matches. Had Ireland defeated Shropshire, they would have then played the Surrey Board XI at Pollock Park in Lurgan, and success there would have meant a match against Somerset at Waringstown next month.

The squandered opportunities are no help to new national coach Ken Rutherford in his build-up to next year's ICC World Cup qualifying tournament in Toronto. Rutherford may consider fielding a young and experimental side of upand-coming players for the annual match against MCC at Eglinton later this month.