MONDAY NIGHT SUMMER LEAGUE WEEK 4 ROUND-UP
Published 13/06/2018 at 08:48:17 by David Wackrill.
DIV 1 Results: Spinners 4 Topspin 1, HowsSmall 4 Sweet N Sour 1, Ijebu Warriors 5 Stormers 0
Table: 1st Howsmall (14), Spinners (14), 3rd Ijebu Warriors (13), 4th Topspin (12) 5th Sweet N Sour (4), 6th Stormers (3)
The 2 unbeaten sides went head to head this week so something had to give and Spinners emerged as clear 4-1 winners over Topspin, who were top going into this round of matches but now fall to 4th. The usual brace for Alan Cherry plus the doubles and one from Pete Tillotson. Topspin’s consolation win came from Mal Hussain. No wins for Russell Penn.
Sweet N Sour regular Julie Snowdon had a theatre date with Matilda so the Div 1 stragglers took the opportunity to bring in one of their big guns, Kelvin Choong, to play alongside Terry Lau. Opponents HowSmall only drafted in Craig Brown today themselves to partner Guy Sparrow. Craig had played a couple of matches for them in 2016 with mixed fortunes (2 wins from 4) and struggled here against Kelvin, losing 11-9 in the 7th for Sweet N Sour’s sole set. A jaunty Kelvin did go on to force guy to save 2 match points in the 6th game before losing in the decider so a great performance all round from him. But the rest was plain sailing for HowSmall who are now joint top following their 4-1 win.
Incidentally Julie is off to Las Vegas for the World Veterans Championships next week so whether she’s playing on the ping pong tables or the gaming tables we all wish her every success.
My Stormer side went down rather easily 5-0 to Ijebu Warriors, Andy Smith and myself never getting to grips with the Ricky Taiwo and Jordi Amat Foraster challenge. We now face a ‘winner stays up’ duel with Sweet N Sour next week in the final match of the first round.
Player of the week is Kelvin Choong.
DIV 2 (courtesy of Mike Ainsworth)
Hit n Hope 2 Towcester 3
Swifts 1 Classics 4
Blades 0 Phoenix 5
World Cup fever may well grip the nation by this time next week but in the meantime on Monday evening all eyes were on the Milton Keynes Summer league as the race for first position in division 2 reached an early climax when leaders Phoenix faced bottom team Blades.
And Phoenix didn’t disappoint as with one week to go before the end of the first round of fixtures the team of Gerald Ridgway and Constantin Ioan comfortably saw off bottom team Blades by 5 sets to Nil and are thus already promoted to the top tier. In fact the only match to extend the winners beyond 4-0 was the doubles, but even that was only 4-1. For the Blades team of Brian Evans and Bill Tyler the fixtures hardly get easier as they are due to play Towcester next week.
Meanwhile second placed Towcester, with Iain Lindsay and Ian Brown available after missing the round 3 match, would have possibly expected an easier contest against Hit n Hope than was the case. In fact after the doubles Hit n Hope, represented by Ivor Howard and Tony Coomber, deservedly led by 2 sets to 1 thanks to a doubles win and a hard fought win by Ivor against Ian Brown. Unfortunately the Milton Keynes team’s hopes of a third successive win were then dashed as the Towcester team powered through the next two sets to win the match by 3 sets to 2.
In the final match Classics came out 4-1 winners against Swifts but although the result was comfortable in the end, the individual match results suggest a much closer encounter on the table with two matches being decided in 7 and a further two in 6 games. A brace here for Nick Markham and a single win for Barbara Peters for Classics and a solitary win for Sue Lewis for Swifts. Mo Duncan was the unlucky player to fail to trouble the scorer.
Player of the evening: Nick Markham.
Week 4 Table
Phoenix 19
Towcester 13
Classics 9
Hit 'N Hope 8
Swifts 7
Blades 4