Leinster vs NW Warriors, 1st Match at Murcia, , Apr 23 2019 - Match Result

13:55 local: I'm afraid that there isn't good news here, the ground just hasn't dried up enough and so the Umpires have decided that we aren't going to be able to play a game today. So the points are going to be shared and hopefully it will be better for tomorrow when the Warriors and Knights will get underway at 10:45am. Till then this is Justin saiying goodbye from La Manga.

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Buenos días y bienvenidos a La Manga for the start of the Irlanda Interprovincial Summer of 2019. This season Cricket Ireland have decided to kick the season off with a round of the Test Triangle IP50 competition in the lovely surroundings of the La Manga Club here in Spain, so with every game this season being covered on ESPNCricinfo hopefully you will be able to follow all the twists and turns on what will be the busiest summer of cricket in Ireland so far.

The summer of 2018 finished off with an IP50 game between the Leinster Lightning and the North West Warriors, so its quite ironic that the 2019 season kicks off with and IP50 game between the two sides almost 3000km away from their last game. Although after months and months of low rainfall out here, there has been torrential rain over the weekend and so to give the ground time to dry out this match has been shifted from Easter Monday to the Tuesday. Guess that we just can't get away from the rain no matter where we play!

The IP50 tournament has been expanded this year to include a new round of games, all of which are going to be played over these next 3 days. Due to Ireland's change in status to Full Member, its safe to save that the quality of play will have gone up this year as most of the Irish players that played for the English counties have had to move back home. Barry McCarthy is back from Durham to boost the Lightning attack, Boyd Rankin is going to be the spearhead of a dangerous Warriors team with Gary Wilson taking over the captain's duties of the Northern Knights. With a host of new younger players also coming forward, this really will be an exciting season.

Lightning Captain George Dockrell will be wanting his team to make a fast start in defending the competiton which they have dominated since the Interpros were brought back. Although the selectors have gone for a very young looking squad, with the retirements of Ed Joyce and John Anderson in the past year there are now places in the team up for grabs. Jack Tector will also be glad to be back in the action after his

injury hit 2018.

The Warriors have a very experienced team out here with four Ireland international bowlers, Captain McBrine will have a lot of options at his disposal. Although the batting does look a little light and you would think that they will be relying heavily on William Porterfield for the runs. Although the Warriors will be without him today as he completes a one game ban from last session. Head Coach Ian McGregor, has said that he has been unhappy with the teams performance in this competition in the previous years. It will be interesting to see if we see much change this year.

With Ireland playing England, West Indies, Bangladesh and Afghanistan in ODI's over the next four weeks, this is the perfect opportunity for a number of players to put in performances and stake a claim for a place in the Ireland team. Especially with Irish Coach Ford here at the ground.

Although it looks like we are going to have a delayed start here today, there was torrential rain this weekend here in La Manga and the pitch looks like it needs a little more time to dry out. So the Umpires have called for an early lunch and we will hopefully be getting underway at around 2pm. So it will mean a reduction to probably 35 overs per side. I'll be able to confirm it as soon as the umpires let me know. You just can't get away from the rain can you?