When Pembroke, batting first, were riddled by The Hills' attack and had lost their first seven batsmen for a paltry 52 runs by lunch, a premature end looked certain at Old Belvedere's Cabra HQ, where the Conqueror Cup final was staged on Saturday. In fact, the see-sawing contest went on for almost another seven hours, thanks to the virtuosity of Pembroke's Ronan Smith and the doughty, if unsuccessful, rearguard action of Gavin Ryan and Paul Mooney for The Hills, which was not enough to stave off a 27-run defeat.
Smith, batting at number nine, smote ten fours and a six off 77 deliveries in his unbeaten 72, thus giving the Man of the Match adjudicator, Alec O'Riordan, the simplest of tasks. After lunch, Smith and Whaley put on 33 for the eighth wicket, which looked little better than a face-saving exercise at the time. But after Whaley was run out at 85 for 8, Smith, aided and abetted by the patient Dwyer, brought the score to 150 without further loss. When The Hills batted, that by now well-worn track from the pavilion to the middle soon got further use, and when five wickets were down for a meagre 18 runs, an embarrassing rout looked imminent. But The Hills are nothing if not fighters; Mooney and Ryan stuck bravely to a difficult task and when they had put on 79 to push the total to 97 anything seemed possible.
But then Richard Hastie was recalled to the Pembroke attack. He brilliantly clean-bowled Ryan to make it 97 for 6, and then similarly removed Joe Clinton just a single run later; 8 runs on, Emmett Whaley trapped Mooney leg before, and at 106 for 8, The Hills' hopes were fading fast.
The former Ireland batsman Decker Curry hit his eighth century of the season as Limavady defeated Donemana by eight wickets in the final of the North West Senior Cup at Eglinton on Saturday. Man of the Match Jadeep Narse also scored a century, in the first innings, and both he and Curry struck 13 fours and two sixes. Curry, the Limavady captain, set a new record by scoring a century in every round of the Cup campaign.
