Richard Gillis On Cricket: The extraordinary success of Ireland's underage teams continues. Last week the under-15 team won the European Championships, making another clean sweep across the age groups.
The under-19 team has qualified for the ICC Under-19 World Cup, in Malaysia in February, 2008. Enormous credit for these achievements goes to Briain O'Rourke, under whose eye the teams are developed.
It was wholly typical when I rang O'Rourke yesterday, I found that, as I apologised for calling on a bank holiday, he said he was in Wolverhampton at an under-15 tournament with the Leinster boys. And would be for the rest of the week.
Without taking any credit away from the excellence of the work being done, the extent of the Irish dominance of European underage cricket raises the question: how good is the opposition? O'Rourke agrees. To the extent he is constantly seeking more testing games for his charges.
"It's important we take them out of their comfort zone of club cricket where things come too easily for them and test them against other types of opponent," he says.
The Leinster under-13 team regularly travels to play against their peers from the nine Welsh counties and this week's sojourn in Staffordshire in England is aimed at pitching the Leinster under-15s against cricketers from English counties.
The make-up of the squad that will contest the Under-19 World Cup has been nurtured in this way and is testimony to O'Rourke's enlightened approach. Some difficult decisions lie ahead, however, squeezing the talent available into the 14-place limit laid down by the ICC rules for the competition.
There will also be some gentle arm twisting ahead of February. The tournament will take place over three weeks, with O'Rourke taking the Ireland squad out for a week's training beforehand. A month away at a time of exam preparation is an additional pressure. "I'll be on the phone to a few college and school principals over the next couple of months," says O'Rourke.
Next week sees the Irish senior women's team travel to the Netherlands to compete in the European Championships. The squad, led by Heather Whelan, will play a quadrangular tournament against Scotland, England A and the hosts.
Whelan told The Irish Times they travel with high expectations of success.
"We came second last time and hope to win this year," she said, marking out England A as potentially the most difficult obstacle to bringing home the silverware.
"It's difficult to know what sort of team they will put out, they tend to select from a mix of up and coming young players and ex-internationals."
Ireland's strength lies in the bowling and fielding, with nine of the regular 11 able to be thrown the ball. The batting, she says, has developed from playing against the men of the junior A league and is reinforced by the return from Australia of the Joyce twins, Isobel and Cecilia. The team is coached by former Ireland international Miriam Grealey and the team manager is Sandra Dawson.
There are close finishes and there are close finishes. Take the semi-final of the Bob Kerr Senior Irish Cup between North County and Railway Union played on Sunday - North County won the game by a margin of 0.36 of a run.
Rain played a big part in the result, inevitably.
The bald facts of the match were that North County posted 296 for 6 off their 50 overs, with Railway Union scoring 195 before rain ended play. This tells only part of the story, however.
Union were slightly ahead of the required run rate at the 30-over stage, which is the minimum number of overs that constitute a match.
In the critical 32nd over the umpires consulted after the fifth ball as the rains came down. They decided that one more ball was possible.
Union then needed two off it to win. Andre Botha bowled to John Moffatt, who could only manage a single and the team came off the field, never to return.
