The Malahide weather obviously doesn’t agree with four-day Emerald Challenge games. Two years ago, the middle two days were completely washed out by the weather. This  year, day one was cold and blustery and the second rain interruption of the day ended play with 35 of the 98 scheduled overs unused.

There was just time for Curtis Campher and Lorcan Tucker to score half-centuries and both are still there to resume their innings in the morning – although again that is dependent on the weather forecast being wrong! At the premature close, Southern Raiders, having won the toss, were 203 for four.

The first half of the day belonged to the Northern Strikers with, encouragingly, just a week out from the Test match, Mark Adair the pick of the bowlers. He bowled a marathon 10-over opening spell that brought the wicket of his Test captain Andrew Balbirnie and in the first over after lunch he tempted a loose shot from Harry Tector – which was not so encouraging.

Adair’s opening partner, Tom Mayes impressed in his second spell – not surprisingly as he was bowling into the wind in his first – and picked up the wicket of Chris de Freitas, who spooned one up to Cain Robertson at mid-on. Robertson is not part of the Strikers 11 but he was on the field for all but the first two overs, substituting for Paul Stirling who, in his first game for 96 days, walked off with a calf problem, never to return.

Craig Young was the other wicket-taker – when does he not take a wicket when bowling for Ireland? – a third catch of the day for Ben Calitz, wearing the gloves in the absence of Sam Topping who was deemed not fit enough to be involved. The first was a fine diving catch to his left, the second, an even better one low to his right to dismiss Stephen Doheny and the third was the most straightforward. But the Lisburn player certainly proved himself more than capable to step up if Tucker gets injured during a match.

Adam Leckey, brought in in place of his Civil Service North team-mate Jordan Neill, bowled four overs of seam and should have got the wicket of Tucker, but Calitz made his only mistake of the day, diving in front of first slip and spilling the catch.

Strikers captain Matthew Humphreys bowled 10 overs of spin without success and Andy McBrine’s hopes of getting an extended spell were dashed  by the weather, the umpires taking the teams off after his first over.

Campher and Tucker are both scoring at a strike rate of 50 and between them they have hit 13 boundaries – Tucker leads by one – and have so far added 95 for the fifth wicket.

DAY ONE SCORECARD