Cricket Round-up: Going into today's round of matches of the WMK League season, North County have built a formidable lead in Section A. The Balrothery side have a day off today, and after their two victories in the last two days, no side can overtake them by tonight.
On Saturday at Inch, they made 301 for 5 with Conor Armstrong making 85, Andre Botha shooting 78 and Seán O'Connor chipping in with 64.
Clontarf chased well but fell 35 runs short despite Trent Johnston scoring another century (107), his third in a week.
Johnston is in a rich vein of form, having scored more than 400 runs in his last four innings. His clubmate and Scottish international Dominic Rigby will be warning his compatriots of the danger facing them ahead of the Scots' three-day match against Ireland in the ICC Inter-Continental Cup in Castle Avenue starting on Friday.
Yesterday, North County dropped just one point against Munster as they chased the Reds' modest total of 170 with seven wickets and 24 overs to spare. Botha was again in the runs with 80 not out. Keeping some pressure on North County, Phoenix had a close win over The Hills in Milverton on Saturday.
In Section B, YMCA have emerged as the form team with a huge 200-run win over Old Belvedere yesterday to go with a much closer victory against Merrion on Friday. Alan Lewis showed he is still able to dominate bowlers at this level with a fine innings of 105 in Cabra yesterday. YM made 301 for 6 before watching their opponents collapse to 101 all out. YM move to the top of Section B ahead of Belvo but with Merrion and Rush playing today, they might not be there for very long.
Phoenix 2nd XI won the Senior 2 Cup for the first time in the club's history with a four-wicket victory over Laois at Malahide on Saturday. Batting first, Laois made 190 with Willie Gibbs (44) and Alan Little (43) top scoring for the midlanders. In reply, Phoenix got the runs with 10n overs to spare, their man-of-the-match Mamu Kumar hitting an unbeaten 44 to go with the three wickets he took earlier in the day.
