MONDAY NIGHT SUMMER LEAGUE WEEK 7 ROUND-UP
DIV 1
Results: HowSmall 4 Stormers 1, Spinners 4 Ijebu Warriors 1, Phoenix 3 Topspin 2
Table: 1st HowSmall (25 pts), 2nd Spinners (24), 3rd Ijebu Warriors (20), 4th Stormers (14), 5th Topspin (14), 6th Phoenix (8)
Anyone counting down Alan Cherry’s victories after reading my opening week’s review will know that his brace tonight brought his total wins in the 2-a-side League to 200. A great landmark for a great local player. To put that in context the next highest number of wins is 136 by Craig Brown (which includes a record 59 set unbeaten run ended by Ben Toombs). Alan’s Spinners team-mate Pete Tillotson found his best form of the Summer to beat Warriors’ Ricky Taiwo and take Jordi Amat Foraster to 11-8 in the 7th. With the doubles going Spinners way they won 4-1.
Another man finding some form after a bad start to the Summer is my Stormers team-mate Andy Smith. After 4 straight game wins in his last 2 matches he raced into a 2 game lead against HowSmall’s Guy Sparrow but couldn’t make the pressure tell. Undaunted however, he bounced back to beat Nick Howard in a 4-1 defeat, one of 3 sets to go the distance in an engaging match. Andy’s place in MK tt trivia is anyway forever established as being the man who handed Guy the first of his 5 unbeaten successive maximums when they met in the Winter League last February.
Phoenix triumphed 3-2 over Topspin to narrow the gap at the bottom to 6 points, which may be too much to bridge in the remaining 3 matches of this cycle for the promoted team. Iaon Constantin beat both Russell Penn and Mervyn Kelly and took the doubles with Gerald Ridgway.
Player of the week is Andy Smith. What a week for the Stormer, with his first grandchild born too.
DIV 2 (courtesy of Mike Ainsworth)
Swifts 1 Towcester 4
Hit n Hope 2 Blades 3
Sweet and Sour 4 Classics 1
With Sue Lewis unavailable Swifts called on super-sub Sarah Hudson for the week seven clash against second in the table Towcester and Sarah didn’t disappoint, coming from 0-3 down against Ian Brown to take the set 4-3 after reeling off four straight games. Unfortunately for Sarah and her team Iain Lindsay wasn’t quite as generous, winning 12-10 in the sixth after Sarah had reduced the deficit this time from 0-3 to 2-3. The match ended 4-1 to Towcester and Mo Duncan was the other player for Swifts.
With Julie Snowdon not due back from her break until next week Sweet and Sour once again called up Kelvin Choong who is always likely to prove to be difficult to beat in this division. And so it proved as he won both his sets comfortably as well as the doubles with Terry Lau. Classics’ only point in a 4-1 defeat came from Nick Markham’s 4-3 win against Terry Lau. Masoud Nassor was the other player for Classics.
Blades finally broke their duck for the season but the match was not without some controversy! The final score was 3-2 to Blades.
Player of the evening: Iain Lindsay.
Week 7 Table
Sweet and Sour 32
Towcester 27
Classics 13
Hit 'N Hope 13
Swifts 11
Blades 9