This Saturday sees the entrance of some of the big boys of island cricket as the Tinker Cup gets under way.

Finch Hill meet Peel and St John’s at Ballafletcher, while Valkyres have another home fixture versus Castletown at Tromode. Finch Hill’s youngsters will have gained a lot of confidence from their Blincoe Cup win last weekend, but they have a lot on their plate against Peel.

In horse racing parlance, they will need to improve by a good few pounds to get past an experienced PSJ side.

However, excellent players such as Eddie and Charlie Beard have recently joined the club, while George Burrows has returned full time.

They will no doubt use the experience gained while playing in the Derbyshire league recently to full effect and give Peel a run for their money.

The westerners may also find the testing terrain of the outfield at Ballafletcher challenging when compared to their own manicured playing area at Mullen-e-Cloie.

In the day’s other tie, Valkyres will be hoping to bounce back after suffering the disappointment of losing to Crosby in the Blincoe quarter-finals.

It is uncertain what kind of Castletown team they will face as the southerners have a number of senior players who are away at university or have retired because of injury.

Perhaps some new Castletown youngsters may get their chance as a result. Young Nathan Williams looked a good prospect when he played in the Tinker final a few weeks ago.

Valkyres have some powerful batsmen in their squad.

Paul Fleming scored 69 runs last weekend including two huge sixes worthy of MS Dhoni and Shahid Rafique should pick up where he left off in 2017.

The remaining batsmen will need to give these two gentlemen their full support.

The bowling attack of Valkyres did quite well last weekend but they will need to cut out the wides and dropped catches which made an unwelcome return in their last game.

My vote for commitment to cricket this week has to go to Finch Hill’s Ben Bennett-Naish.

His good lady had experienced labour pains but, having been informed that it was a false alarm on this occasion, they returned home.

Ben, however, then went off to to play cricket. He was out first ball for a golden duck. Fair justice, some may say!

ANDY COULSON