THE first round of the KPMG Channel Island knock outs features the top four sides from each Island.

Romerils and Old Victorians travel to Guernsey while Sporting Club and St Ouen take on their Guernsey opposition on home soil

Optimists v Old Victorians Having just managed to claim the final place in this competition, Old Victorians are now one of the favourites to win it.

This strange situation occurs annually as many of their team are away at University during the early part of the season and they have to rely on either the very young or others at the other end of the age spectrum to make up the numbers early in the season.

Last year they managed to win the league but this year results haven’t gone their way and it wasn’t until their final match victory over Romerils that they secured their place in this tournament.

They have a difficult first match against current champions, Optimists, who secured the Guernsey league title last week when they beat great rivals Cobo.

They have lost a couple of players since last season, but have a robust batting line up with Mark Clapham (av 55), Ami Banerjee (40) and island captain Andy Biggins (49), Mark Jefferies and the big hitting GH Smit their main scorers.

The ageless Mike Kinder can still cause batsmen problems with the ball as evidenced by his match winning five wickets last Saturday.

I’m not totally convinced by OVs, they were beaten by St Ouen and Caeasarens recently and face a strong side here without skipper Chris Jones.

OVs will still be hopeful of a victory but home advantage may be the telling factor, that being the case it will be Optimists who will get their defence off to a good start.

Prediction: Optimists have more reasons to be hopeful than OVs who will be optimistic nonetheless.

St Ouen v Cobo It would be wrong to assume that OVs are the only club afflicted by the problem of having players at university during the early part of the season.

Whereas OVs have had to make do without the Goughs, Dewhursts, Hughes etc, St Ouen have also been similarly handicapped as they have been without Richard Anthony.

He ‘turned the match around’ last week when he claimed both Caesareans openers’ wickets when they were threatening to make short work of St Ouen’s total.

Could any of the aforementioned OVs players have done that? I doubt it.

Richard you are worth your weight in Marlborough lights (duty free prices).

Cobo made a mess of chasing Optimists low score in their league-deciding clash last week.

They contain several well known faces such as the over 40s pair Mark Renouf and Gary Rich, nick-named Stan due to his resemblance to Stan Laurel, and Mat Oliver nick named Ollie for obvious reasons.

Jeremy Frith and Stuart Le Provost are likely to be absent which is good news for the resurgent St Ouen and with the advantage of playing at home on FB fields, they can just sneak the win.

Prediction: Poor old Stan and Ollie to find themselves in another fine mess.

Sporting Club v Rovers Last Saturday’s win was Sporting Clubs 12th straight win of the season.

It wasn’t their greatest batting performance but they managed to protect their modest total to book a place in another final.

They bowled well on a lively wicket with Tony Carlyon taking two for 5.

The first of his victims was given the usual send off especially as it was wrongly printed that he had taken ten wickets and not 12 this season.

I can confirm that he has taken 12 league wickets, but as the averages are compiled only from league performances he was wrong to claim that I had just become his thirteenth victim.

I was either his 18th victim from all competitions or his sixth in the Senior Cup.

They take on Rovers, who finished fourth in the Guernsey league, at Grainville.

Rovers can be a match for anyone on their day and recorded a win over Optimists in the league.

Tim Duke (average 53) has had a good season although he has pulled out of the trip to Scotland and Richard Headington (46), Quentin Hubbard (37) and captain Stuart Bisson (34) have also scored plenty of runs.

Whether they are a match for Hague’s all conquering team is doubtful.

Now he’s started, Trevor Rousseau can’t stop scoring runs and has regressed to his former ways with three not outs in his last three innings and Meeku Patidar is making the most of the chances he gets.

The fact that they had four ducks in their innings last week will give Rovers some hope as will the fact that they are without Mark Reynolds, Nick Jewell and last week’s top scorer Bradley Vowden.

The return of Steve Carlyon negates this though and in their current form anything other than a Sporting Club victory would be a shock.

Prediction: Win number 13 for SCF on the cards, or is it their third cup tie win of the season? Romerils v Mavericks Romerils crashed out of the Senior Cup to Sporting last week.

Having bowled and fielded well – Martin Waite’s two catches are worthy of a far higher level of verbal eloquence than I can spout – their batting suffered early on.

Despite brave efforts from James Caunt, who celebrated his birthday with a much needed 50, and Pete Blackburn, who achieved a PB when he scored 39 not out, they fell just short of Sporting’s modest 160.

They will have to step up a gear if they are to make an impression in this traditionally strong tournament which they won under the guise of LS Insurance in 1999, when none other than Matty Hague guided them to victory.

The competition hasn’t been kind to them since and they failed to win any of their three matches in it last year.

They travel to Guernsey to take on the appropriately named third-placed side Mavericks, who consist of a lot of well known faces and current bad boy of Guernsey Cricket, Australian, Justin Meades, who has scored 439 runs (av 73).

There are many ex Island players in their squad, Paul Wakeford, Andy Burkhardt and ex holders of the “”bad boy”" tag, Mark Culverwell and Vince Kenny who have all played their fair share of inter insulars and have helped Mavericks to their prominent league position.

Norah the Scorer, who is a bit of a maverick herself, is leaning toward the Guernsey side but Gillian disagrees and says Romerils will win.

Norah fires back a snipe about Gillian’s lack of cricket knowledge to which Gillian says that’s as maybe, but at least she gets her predictions right.

I’m not sure what happened next as I was hit by a flying tea cup but when I came around they were both in agreement that Mavericks would win, although Gillian was a bit hard to understand as her jaw had been wired up.

Prediction: Mavericks to deliver Norah-like knock out blow.