All Ireland Club Rankings

After far too many hours slaving away over spreadsheets, the All-Ireland Club rankings can be finally revealed. Based on the ICC's ODI rankings, the Irish equivalent will use all non-20 over competitions in the LCU, NWCU and NCU to reveal who's the best, who's challenging, and who should be doing better

So how do they work? The winner of each completed match (so abandoned matches or those where clubs have been awarded a walkover aren't included) is allocated a certain number of points, depending on the quality of the opposition - the higher the number of points the opposition has, the higher the number of points the winning team will get. Similarly a losing team will get less points if it loses to a weak team than if it loses to a strong team. In addition to this, games in the most recent 365 days contribute more to a team's ranking than those points won in older matches. If this makes it as clear as mud, check out this more detailed explanation on Wikipedia

A slight problem has emerged in that it isn't that easy to get fixtures for certain games. The rankings start at the beginning of the 2000 season (results before this aren't on CricketEurope), and include the following competitions - LCU - Senior League (Section A & B), Senior Cup, 45 over League - NCU - Senior League (Divisions 1 & 2), Senior Cup - NWCU - Senior League (Divisions 1 & 2), Senior Cup, Sam Jeffrey Cup and Faughan Valley Cup and then the Irish Senior Cup and Ulster Cup. I haven't included any Munster results as I haven't been able to find match results. Similarly matches for junior Leinster clubs haven't been included as their results aren't available on the web. Finally, Division 3 league matches in the North West, and Division 3 and 4 matches in the NCU were not included. Because of the way the rankings work, teams that had a brilliant season in Division 4 of the NCU (but who didn't play cup matches against higher ranked teams) would have the same ranking as those who had brilliant seasons in Division 1. With due respect to the successful (Division 3 and 4) Larne team of 2000 and 2001, they weren't as good as North Down, despite losing less matches

1	2012 Rankings - Big gap between top two and rest
2	2011 Rankings - An NCU 1-2 at the end of the season
3	2010 Rankings - No dominant team in the country - Railway lead
4	2009 Rankings - End of an era as North County slip to 5th. Limavady are the new champs
5	2008 Rankings - North County win ISC again to be champions for the fifth time
6	2007 Rankings - North Down knock North County from their perch
7	2006 Rankings - Railway dominate, but only move up to 9th. North County are top again
8	2005 Rankings - History made as an LCU team is the best in the land. North County end Donemana's reign
9	2004 Rankings - Limavady win ISC, Strabane surge up the table but Donemana make it three in a row
10	2003 Rankings - Donemana retain title as North County enter the Top 5

Pos	Batsman	Runs	Bowler	Wickets
1	Badal Kumar	197	Joel Leacock	11
2	Rompey Chhabra	149	Mark Crangle	8
3	Khizer Khan	132	Finn Connighty	8
4	Alan Godfrey	119	Hugh Mullen	7
5	Barra Mac Niocaill	115	Jack Fitzgerald	7
6	Hugh McDonnell	113	Tom Murray	7
7	Asim Mumtaz	91	Tim Law	7
8	David Lucas	69	Paul Rodgers	6
9	Luke Ginell	63	Four others	5
10	Susheel Kumar	57

Tacky Blue Trophy 2012 (all games to May 15th)- A name from the past jumps out at the reader this week - Luke Ginnell returned to the club, scoring a 50 for the 6ths, and 9th spot on the Tacky batting. Badal Kumar stands clear at the top with 197 runs. Professional Joel Leacock has impressed all with his start to the season, and it may be that he is not caught all year. Already he is three clear with 11 wickets. Good news for Asim Nazir - the trophies are at the engravers as we speak, and may even make it to the club this weekend

Rank	Team	Average
1	Waringstown	108
2	North Down	108
3	North County	99
4	Merrion	98
5	Railway Union	97
6	The Hills	92
7	Brigade	92
8	Limavady	92
9	Instonians	92
10	Strabane	90

Leinster CC's 2009 Bob Kerr Irish Senior Cup winning team May 15th 2012 - A new season, and some real worries for the LCU. Strenth in depth is no problem, with four LCU clubs in the top 6. However Waringstown and North Down have built up a large gap at the top of the list. Clontarf's slide continues, with Leinster now being above them for the first time. In 2009, Clontarf were the second best club in Ireland, and in 2005, were 37 places ahead of Leinster. The scope of the rankings has also been expanded to include the growth of the game - more details at http://www.leinster.cc/features/allirelandclubrankings/2012rankings

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