MONDAY NIGHT SUMMER LEAGUE WEEK 5 ROUND-UP
Published 25/06/2019 at 16:46:05 by David Wackrill.
DIV 1 Scores –
Howsmall 3 Spinners 2
Warriors 4 Phoenix 1
Aylesbury 3 Towcester 2
This week brings the first cycle (of 3) to a close with Phoenix stuck in bottom place and looking certainties for relegation at the half way stage. After a bright opening win to their Summer campaign Phoenix have now lost 4 on the trot, this latest defeat to 2nd placed Warriors. Ricky Taiwo was the star man here with a fine brace and the doubles win with Michael Wilkins. Phoenix’ Ioan Constantin took him close though with 5 out of 6 games in their defensive duel decided by an 11-9 scoreline. Ioan went on to a consolation win over Michael in another long battle, settled at 11-8 in the 7th. Gerald Ridgway was the other Phoenix player.
Aylesbury and Towcester were level pegging going into their match, ensuring that the winners would be in 4th place at the end of the night. The honour went to Aylesbury 3-2 despite dropping the doubles. Ben Rolfe hit a brace against Iain Lindsay and Ian Brown while Chris Hawkes took a vital win over Ian.
Leader’s Howsmall bounced back from last week’s defeat with a 3-2 victory over Spinners. The big news here was Nick Howard’s win over Alan Cherry to end Alan’s 21 set winning sequence going back to last July. Nick also beat Pete Tillotson and took the double with Guy Sparrow, who must have had an off night to lose both his singles in straight games.
9 of the 15 results so far this Summer have been by 3-2 score-lines, emphasising the closeness and competitiveness of most matches.
Player of the week is Nick Howard.
Table
Howsmall (20 points)
Warriors (17)
Spinners (13)
Aylesbury (10)
Towcester (9)
Phoenix (6)
Top 6 averages (3 or more matches played)
Alan Cherry 90%, Nick Howard 90%, Guy Sparrow 63%, Ricky Taiwo 63%. Ben Rolfe 50%, Michael Wilkins 50%
DIV 2 (courtesy of Mike Ainsworth)
DYLAN HITS THE HEIGHTS
Phoenix II 5 Hit n Hope 0
Blades 0 Sweet and Sour 5
Tornadoes 0 Topspin 5
Stormers 4 Classics 1
On a muggy evening the match and the match result of the week in MK Summer League Division Two was arguably on the first table (not to be confused with Table One!) as Topspin recovered from their blip in week four to earn a 5-0 result against Tornadoes. On the face of it a straight forward win for the higher rated team but the match card tells a different story. Russell Penn described the match as “hard fought” in an email to me and that looks like an apt description as two of the singles matches were won in the decider and two more went to six games. Russell also conceded that the two Tornadoes’ youngsters were unlucky to come away empty handed. In the end hard fought braces for Russell and the returning Mervyn Kelly and at the same time Nicholas Wong and Tanmay Tijare will play worse in the future and come away with more than last night.
If the match result of the evening was on the first table then the individual result of the four matches was on the adjacent table where another youngster, Dylan Cox, overcame the so-far unbeaten Andy Smith over seven ends, halting the run of 0-5 results for his Classics Team. Unfortunately for the Classics that proved to be the highlight of the evening as his team slipped to a 1-4 defeat against Andy and the ever-resilient Dave Wackrill. Barbara Peters was the other player for Classics.
The Phoenix II team of Mervyn Phillips and Valentin Cazacu continue to head the division with just two weeks to go before the half way stage. This week’s victims were Hit n Hope who drafted in the so far unbeaten Marco Hahn, together with Andy Frearson to no avail. Despite some close matches Phoenix II ended with their fifth win from five and their third 5-0 result.
Brian Evans has a good record against Terry Lau on Saturday mornings at the Centre but as Brian said to me after they met in the summer league match “He used tactics tonight!” As a result Terry cruised to a 4-1 win against Brian, who had a closer match against Julie Snowdon before Julie also won by 4-1, albeit with closer games than against Terry. No such luck for Mark Thomas, who was on the wrong end of two 4-0 losses and with the doubles also going the way of the Sweet and Sour duo they ended up with their first maximum win of the summer and leapfrog Hit n Hope into fourth place.
Andy Smith’s defeat means that after five weeks there is only one player – Mervyn Phillips – on 100% with a minimum of 3 matches played. Andy Smith and Valentin Cazacu (who played some terrific shots last night against Marco and Andy) are hot on his heels with 90% from 5 matches whilst Mervyn Kelly and Julie Snowdon are both on 75% from 4 matches.
Player of the week: Dylan Cox
Division Two Table
1) Phoenix II 23
2) Stormers 20
3) Topspin 18
4) Sweet and Sour 14
5) Hit n Hope 12
6) Tornadoes 6
7) Classics 4
8) Blades 3