When it's good, Irish Senior club cricket is very good, but when it drops below that high standard it is really very poor. What we lack is strength in depth or, more accurately, any depth of strength. I watched two games over the weekend, three of the four teams were off their game for one reason or another, and it wasn't pretty.

On Friday a depleted Strabane travelled to Dublin to play a depleted YMCA in a Bob Kerr Irish Senior Cup first round refix. It wasn't just the teams that were depleted: one of the umpires didn't show (his cry-off hadn't registered at Chung HQ), so your correspondent had to do striker's end while Marty Block did the hard work.

Strabane quickly lost Niall McDonnell, caught at slip by Alan Lewis off James Parkinson, but Terence Patton and Jonathan Beukes gradually started to work the ball around, and saw off Parkinson and Reinhardt Strydom. Beukes started to play some nice shots through the covers, mainly off the front foot.

The score had reached 69 when Patton miscued Etesham Ahmed to Parkinson for a solid 35. This brought in Peter Gillespie, who was quickly into his stride and saw his partner to fifty. On 54, Beukes was dropped at extra cover, and the score accelerated past 100. YM's attack was sufficiently threadbare that Angus Dunlop had to do his full set of 10 with his offies.

To everybody's surprise, especially Dirty Den's, he bowled Gillespie for 27, and six runs later Beukes (71) lofted Strydom to Ross Johnson at long off to make a very threatening 125-2 into a precarious 131-4. Ciaran Patton and Ryan Gallagher saw Strabane to 156, when they both departed in quick succession together with Paul McNamee.

YM had targeted a score no higher than 200, and 170-7 was well on course for that. But big Darren Moan had other ideas, and thumped his way to 39 good runs in company with Tommy Barr and Phil Eaglestone (17) to get to 231 all out off 47.3 overs, a decent score which required proper batting to be got.

Strydom took 3/42, Parkinson 2/40, Dunlop 2/46, Ahmed 1/45 and skipper Warwick Armstrong a fraught 2/53. Wazza has captained the side long enough and has two former Ireland captains to help him, especially when he's bowling himself, not to let things slip as easily as he did.

But he got a performance out of each of those golden oldies. Reinhardt Strydom and Alan Lewis saw off a good opening spell from Eaglestone while milking the substandard offerings from the other end. I ran out of room in my little notepad counting the overs of Ryan Patton, Peter Gillespie, Darren Moan, Ciaran Patton and Ryan Gallagher before Moan and Tommy Barr settled down to bowl something vaguely resembling line and length.

By this time 'Rainy' was well past fifty, the partnership well past the ton, and YM well on top. Lewis had a couple of escapes in the twenties, but got to 51 before slapping a waist-high pie to Ciaran Patton on the fence. Marty Block assured the Living Legend that it wasn't a no ball and that he had to go.

Eaglestone then bowled out in an attempt to put pressure on the home team. He had Strydom lbw for 87, and Dunlop caught behind for 24 (another request for steward's inquiry fell on deaf ears). In between, 'Shammy' had played a loose shot to be caught at mid off, and there was a wobble at 191-4, still forty runs short and nothing much left in the locker.

James Parkinson and Ross Johnson got most of the arrears knocked off before Parky holed out for 17. When the scores were level in the 46th over, Peter Gillespie bowled his umpteenth no ball, this time deliberately, and Johnson whacked it back over Den's head for six.

I later checked with my good friend the LCUSA Training Officer that this six didn't count – the match was over with the no ball – so Johnson finished on 22*, and Gillespie on 1/31. Eaglestone's figures were 10-1-42-2, Moan's 8-0-45-1 and Barr's a very good 9-0-28-1.

I don't know what the precise solution is, but Irish Senior Cup matches shouldn't be settled when one or both teams is of necessity well below strength – it is the island's premier club competition, after all.

On Saturday, both Leinster and Railway Union were one player short of a first choice eleven, but it hosed down all day, so the DGM final will now be played next Sunday, 14th June, in Park Avenue, with a twelve noon start.

The heavy rain had rendered Cabra even more of a swamp than it normally is, so the only Senior action on Sunday was at Castle Avenue , where league champions The Hills visited Clontarf. Each side was missing a player to the Irish squad (Alex Cusack and Jeremy Bray), but otherwise at full strength.

The Hills got off to a bad start. Patrick Byrne nicked off, Albert van der Merwe wasn't convinced his edge had carried to Rod Hokin at second slip, and Max Sorensen thought his lbw was high, wide and not so handsome. Mike Baumgart and Imran ul-Haq rescued things from 19-3 and tucked into some tripe served up by Vijay Gopal and Greg Molins.

Then Imran was lbw to Gopal for 26, Baumgart lbw to Jordan Coghlan for 13, and the Wilberries were in terminal doo-dah. The lower order batsmen hadn't a clue how to play Rod Hokin's leg breaks, and weren't helped by the contemporary interpretation of the lbw law, which encourages umpires to watch the ball pitch on middle and consistently turn past off stump but to reckon that a ball that is intercepted by the pad (not on the full) eight feet in front of the stumps won't turn.

Hokin bowls a good googly, but I didn't pick either of his lbws as anything other than a leggie, and I think he was flattered by his figures of 5.2-4-3-3. But The Hills didn't deserve much better than 88 for their poor technique. Hokin wasn't the only one with flattering figures: Morrissey 7-4-4-1; D'Arcy 7-0-21-2; Coghlan 6-0-9-1; Spelman 2-0-2-1. Gopal and Molins were more than flattered by 4-0-23-1 and 6-1-24-1 respectively.

Dom Rigby and Bill Coghlan survived without incident the eleven overs before tea, but after the sangers and fancies van der Merwe trapped Coghlan lbw for 19, and Max Sorensen tried some chin music on Rod Hokin. An unconvincing pull for 2 was followed by a high lob to the keeper, and next ball Dom Rigby nicked one to James Rogan. That made it 32-3.

Andrew Poynter and Greg Molins got into line, saw out Sorensen (10-2-29-2), and picked off the loose deliveries from Luke Clinton and Albert van der Merwe to coast home in the 26th over. Molins was dropped on 13, but survived to make 23*. Poynter finished on 28* and looked a class above anybody else on show.

One of the umpires, Peter Rogers, was on an exchange from Bristol . I tried to reassure him that Leinster Senior cricket is normally a lot better than this, particularly from these two teams. It was just a bad day at the office all round.