There were three interesting matches on offer in Section A of the Leinster Senior League, but for me the obvious game to watch was the Section B top of the table clash between the leaders, YMCA, and their closest pursuers, Phoenix . What made it more interesting was that third-placed Malahide, with two games in hand, had an away banker of a fixture in Terenure.

The overnight rain stopped exactly at ten, as predicted by the BBC, and when I arrived at a damp Claremont Road , the umpires had already decided to put the start back to 11:30 with no loss of overs. Then, again predicted by the BBC, there were showers passing over, one of which was heavy enough to delay things a further thirty minutes and reduce the match to one of 46 overs. Phoenix won the toss and elected to bat.

In his second over James Parkinson got one to leave Graham Flanagan late enough to induce a nick through to James Shortt, to make it 1-1. In Reinhardt Strydom's third over the left-armer got one to carry on across Paddy Conliffe and find the edge, but the far from diminutive keeper spilled the catch.

Next over, Matt Plunkett-Cole got squared up by Parky's away swing and was lbw for 10 out of 19-2. Andrew Downton knows Parky from Sydney , and just blocked out his next two overs. The tall redhead took a break with figures of 7-3-7-2. Strydom had been relieved of his duties an over earlier, seemingly not on the friendliest of terms with his skipper Warwick Armstrong.

Before he was out, Plunkett-Cole had pushed a ball from Rainy gently toward mid off where Wazza was deep in tactical recluse. In a forlorn attempt to prevent the single, he swooped and . . . missed the ball, which dribbled away far enough for an easy second. Rainy's teapot was mirrored by Wazza's. Had this been the skipper's only fielding lapse of the afternoon it could have been easily forgiven and forgotten.

But wherever Wazza stood, there appeared a minefield between him and the ball. Not having a sniffer dog with him, nor any captive VC or Al-Qaida to push through first to trigger the explosions for him, he picked his way gently, gingerly and very slowly though the infield as the Phoenix batsmen ran singles at will. He needed a Princess Di figure to console him and kiss him better, but the only warm, furry thing in sight was Lewie's coiffured grey barnet.

Stu McCready had replaced Rainy and in his third over bowled a short one to Downton, who swivelled into a pull shot. The ball kept low, crashed into the pad, and the Aussie didn't even look up as he headed back to the pavilion for 6. 32-3 in the eighteenth over became 53-3 off 23 at drinks, Paddy Conliffe and David Langford-Smith launching the odd drive to the boundary.

Both batted very positively after the juice, and added 46 in six overs, running their singles, especially to the skipper, and crashing increasingly frequent boundaries, especially off Paul Beacroft. The 30th over was to be Smacker's last, and he tempted Conliffe into a swing and a miss, bowling him for 40 out of 90. In came Conor Kelly, who is always positive: he has to be.

He may lack technique, but he has a good eye, and with Lanky had added 56 in a further seven overs when he got in a tangle and lobbed the ball between mid wicket, Parkinson, and mid on, Carl Hosford. It was Hos's catch, Parky got out of the way, and Hos dropped it. As Gus Dunlop and Wazza disappeared to all parts, Lanky reached his fifty in the 40th over and started to become a danger to migrating birds and Cerebral Palsey Ireland as he went aerial.

The hundred partnership came in the 42nd over, was celebrated by a six to bring up Kelly's fifty, a single off a Wazza no ball, two off the free hit (there was an easy three, but Lanky was having fun), then six, four. The DLS ton came up in the 45th over, and Polly was lbw to Rainy next over, the last, for 58, a partnership of 161 in 16 overs.

There was still time for Lanky to whack Rainy over Cerebral Palsey into Sandymount Avenue . A replacement ball was found, which Lanky immediately dragged on to his stumps for 121 with 11 fours and five sixes. Phoenix finished with a 46 over score of 261-6, Parkinson taking 2/35, Strydom 2/41 and McCready 2/33. Beacroft's nine went for 54, Dunlop and Armstrong between them bowled nine overs for 93.

Wazza had warned me that tea would not be able to compare with the feast served up in the reverse fixture at Phoenix , which was special, but the sangers, cake and bikkies were good, and Lewie and Rainy went out well-fed to face Andrew Downton and David Langford Smith.

Lanky looked pretty sharp, and Lewie edged him between first and second slip for four before edging another low to be well snaffled by Paddy Conliffe. Replacement living legend Gus Dunlop worked the ball around, but never looked comfortable, though Rainy played some nice shots in a developing second wicket partnership.

On 15, with the total on 50, there was an enormous appeal from Lanky against Gussie for a caught behind down the leg side, and next ball for a leg before, but shortly afterwards he succumbed to the gentler pace of Paddy Conliffe and chipped one to Nat King-Cole for 21 out of 62. Stu McCready is a higher class, more mature version of Conor Kelly, and essentially biffs anything in his half, preferably straight.

He gives chances, and was spilled by Kumar early on. Rainy had already been dropped by Corie Dickeson shortly after Dunlop was out, and it was there that Phoenix lost the match. Andrew Downton had a rare ordinary afternoon with the ball, Conliffe and Kelly were very ordinary, and the Phoenix spinners were just rubbish.

Rainy and Smacker reached drinks at 138-2, more than half way there, with Rainy past his fifty. Despite losing Smacker just after he'd got to fifty out of a partnership of 94, Paul Beacroft survived two run out chances to add 52 with Strydom. Then we had an outbreak of dirty swine shouting and bat waving. Is this yet another pandemic?

So-called, self-styled leg-break bowler Stevie Neill tossed one up to Rainy who swept and missed. Umpire Clive Colleran answered the leg before appeal in the affirmative, but Strydom, six short of his third ton of the season, waggled the bat in Clive's direction and left as sick as the proverbial parrot. Then Beekers prodded half forward to Lanky and was horrified to see Marty Block in full chung mode. More bat-waving, more 'body language', but off he had to go for 24.

However, 208-3 to 214-5 was but a hiccough in YM's easy progress to victory. The uncomplicated James Parkinson (stop it or whack it) and the technically highly competent Carl Hosford (five years ago he was opening the batting for South Leinster) saw them home with three overs to spare, Parky 35* and Hos 19*.

Lanky bowled well enough for his 2/32 off 8, but the other figures are as unflattering as Susan Boyle's. But at least she can sing when she's not winning. Malahide won at the Chlee, so barring miracles, Phoenix are stuck in Section B. Leinster's victory at Clontarf and Pembroke's defeat at The Hills means, except for the biggest comeback since Lazarus, Pembroke are down to join them.

Pembroke have a vastly better team and club set-up than Phoenix , so the erstwhile toffs of Dublin cricket are now set to be perennial slumdogs. How many millionaires will they have to go through to change this?

There were showers about on Sunday morning, but Sydney Parade was dry and there was a prompt start to the first of the 4FM Alan Murray Cup semi finals between The Hills and Phoenix . The Hills won the toss, batted and despite losing Michael O'Herlihy early on, set a platform for a winning score through Albert van der Merwe (47) and Mike Baumgart (27).

Max Sorensen's 37 and Patrick Byrne's unbeaten 18 took The Hills to 154-6. For Phoenix , Andrew Downton's four overs cost only 15 runs, and Masud Ahmed's spinners yielded 3/28 off four overs. Sorensen then blasted his team into the final and Phoenix to an early lunch with four wickets in his first three overs. The survivor, David Langford Smith, hung around for 27 through good fortune.

He got off the mark with a cut through Baumgart's hands in the gully, was dropped at third man by Malcolm Byrne, missed behind the stumps before being stumped by James Rogan. Masud Ahmed (13), Alastair Stone (11*) and Steven Neill (16) gave a gloss of respectability to the score before Neill was last out to an excellent catch by Mike Baumgart. Phoenix made 89 off 17.2 overs.

Railway Union won the toss in the second semi final, batted, and were squeezed out by a disciplined bowling and fielding performance from Leinster . Kenny Carroll, Tom Fisher, Conor Mullen and Tim Townend all succumbed before Saad Ullah (20) and Druv Kapoor (27) got the score up to 84-5 off 16. But the tail wasn't allowed to wag, and the innnings closed on 107-7.

Chris Byrnes took 1/24, Will Lennon 1/13, George Dockrell 2/25, Anton Scholtz 1/17 and Carlos Brathwaite 1/24, each off four overs. Mark Jones survived a stumping chance in the first over from Greg Lambert, and with Jason Molins took command. Leinster should really have won by ten wickets, but Molins went one short of fifty and Jonesey for 34. Brathwaite (13*) and Scholtz (10*) finished it off in 13.2 overs.

It was suggested that the final be brought forward by half and hour, but Scholtz insisted on maintaining his team's strict training schedule, which included a twenty minute burger break. It worked. He won the toss, watched Jason Molins carve a short ball from Sorensen straight to point first ball (a Royal duck?), and then saw the Carlos Brathwaite show.

The tall Bajan played some magnificent shots in a 21-ball fifty, including a remarkable switch hit through the covers, a reverse sweep, and some big, big sixes. At the other end, Mark Jones survived his obligatory stumping chance to launch his full range of drives and pulls. Brathwaite was out for 53 in the eighth over with the score past the hundred, when Jonesey took over.

He survived more chances, including Mike Baumgart taking a fine catch but unable to stop himself stepping over the boundary, before falling to a catch on the boundary by Mark Dwyer for 91 out of 181. Anton Scholtz hit a boundary off the last ball to take himself to 37* and the total to 200-6.

The Hills made a valiant effort to chase down the total – they were never completely out of it, just requiring two big overs to get themelves up to the rate of tens. van der Merwe made 24 before falling to a very sharp catch by Scholtz, the dangerous Sorensen was bowled by Dockrell, but after 11 overs the Wilberries were 99-3.

In the thirteenth over Mike Baugart was stumped by Ian O'Herlihy (who kept a fine wicket in both matches) for 46, but Patrick Byrne never gave up, and his unbeaten 57 took The Hills to 176-6 off 20, a total that would win at least 95% of Twenty20 matches.

Mark Jones won the Man-of-the-Match award, The Hills boys all got giant tubes of jelly beans as runners-up prizes, and everybody had a super day out. The bar missed out on the largesse of the two sets of alickadoos from Phoenix and Railway, and I got two important things wrong.

I said Railway would win on a good pitch, but the pitch wouldn't be good and they would probably still win. They didn't. The pitch was good, far, far better than for last year's finals. Dickie Butler and Johnny Bell told me it was pitch 12, the one nearest the railway line, the one on which in nineteen hundred and frozen-to-death I watched Chris Torrisi and Brad Spanner make big hundreds in one of the best exhibitions of batting I've ever seen.

Jonesey and especially Carlos were more inventive than Brad and Tosser ten years ago, and for me that's what Twenty20 has brought to cricket – lots of thought, innovation, practice and hard work. There was none of the much-vaunted and -publicised 'excitement': there was just loads and loads of pleasure in watching good things done very well.

In the bar afterwards I commented to Louis Fourie, Nigel Parnell and Jim McGeehan that I'd seen five umpires over the weekend and couldn't make a serious adverse comment about any of them. They immediately demanded to see that in writing. There you are, lads!

I couldn't work out why the Rescue helicopter kept crossing the ground. It was of no use to Phoenix or Railway – they were dead and buried anyway.