CRICKET COLUMN: A victim of weather, poor roads and bowl-outs, it's time to axe Ulster Cup

The damp picture at Belmont this afternoon after torrential rain hit Belfast on Friday morning

First things first. The Ulster Cup was a real breath of fresh air when it was first introduced in 1999.

In the era before Twenty20, the format of 40 overs per side was shorter, sharper and it was refreshing to see the cream of NCU and North West clubs going to head on a regular basis.

As the Celtic tiger roared at the start of the century and the Irish Cup became an effective graveyard for clubs north of the border, the Ulster Cup became even more relevant. It was just about the only means by which clubs from the NCU and North West could meet in the second half of the season.

But after almost two decades, amid declining interest among players and spectators, it’s high time the cricket authorities pulled the plug on a tournament that felt increasingly like a burden in recent years.

If any tournament should be the casualty of our increasingly bad summer weather it is the Ulster Cup.

Two seasons ago the final itself between Bready and Waringstown was almost decided by a bowl-out before common sense prevailed, and the damp summer of 2016 has left the latter stages of the competition open to ridicule.

First, in the quarter-finals, two of the ties were settled by bowl-out, cricket’s equivalent of the National Lottery.

Without being disrespectful to Ardmore, the North West club were massive underdogs, first in their last eight tie against CIYMS, and then against Waringstown in the semi-finals.

It was bad enough that Ardmore’s tie with CI went to a bowl-out (Waringstown won by the same method against Strabane), but for a semi-final of a premier cup competition to go to a bowl-out after a first washout in early July, when the final is not scheduled until the end of August, is a serious blow for the competitions’s credibility.

The clubs, seemingly, weren’t offered any alternatives, but even if they had been, would there have been any appetite for either semi-finalist to have made the long journey down the A5? Had it been the Irish Cup, or either of the domestic senior cup competitions, you could have bet on both teams wanting another crack on the pitch. Instead, a bowl-out felt too convenient.

Contrast the deeply unsatisfactory events in the Ulster Cup with the manner in which the NCU handled last weekend’s washout in the Lagan Valley Steels Twenty20 Cup finals day.