PREMIER / DIV 1 ROUND-UP WEEK 10
Published 27/11/2023 at 13:33:30 by David Wackrill.
PREMIER TOMEK TROUNCES TOP TEAM TITANS
Greenleys Monarchs may have played a dud hand last week against perennial title rival MK Spinners but they certainly came up trumps this time out when holding MK Titans to a draw and breaking the leaders' 100% win record for the season in the process. Pride of place goes to Tomek Nowakowski with a hat-trick,, Martin Hall chipping in with a decent brace to secure the impressive score-line but Dave Beddall remained winless. After beating Nick Howard and Guy Sparrow 3-straight, Tomek dropped his only game of the night to Craig Brown in his final outing. Titan’s sets came courtesy of Nick (2), Guy (1) and Craig (1) and the Nick/Craig doubles.
A 9-1 win over MK club-mates Phoenix enabled Spinners to climb level with Titans on 69 points, albeit having played one match more. Phoenix set came from Ioan Constantin over Gary Jones at 11-9 in the 5th in a classic defence v attack encounter. Maximums for Alan Cherry and Jecu Aurelian while Gerald Ridgway and Mervyn Phillips remained winless for the bottom side.
Greenleys Glory are going great guns in their first ever Premier season and won 6-4 this week against MK Sasaki, The usual Ian Mead treble, a doubles win with Jacob Midson and singles from Jacob and Iain Lindsay saw Glory over the line. Two wins a-piece from Sasaki’s Michael Wilkins and Minesh Pitamber was the Sasaki response. Div 2 sub Paul Tompkins made up the numbers, his third, and probably last, outing in a higher Division this season.
In the final match Greenleys Warriors easily beat their mid-table rivals Leighton Buzzard Generations 8-2. More lower division subs used here with Iko Jacob and Fabrice Spelta coming into the Generations side, Fabrice also for the third occasion. Hakan Karaagac engineered his side’s points when beating Darren Ward and Shrishlal Basant Rai. Hat-trick for outgoing Warrior skipper Ricky Taiwo.
Player of the week : Tomek Nowakowski
DIVISION 1
CHACKMORE DOUBLES RECORD GOES AT LAST
Chackmore Hasbeens magnificent doubles pairing of Bub Burman and Andy Whitehead suffered their first defeat of the season after 8 previous wins when losing to MK Sharks Rupert Greyling and Derick Rodrigues. The Bub/Andy duo have been by far the most successful doubles team of all the League's Divisions over the past 6 years, which has served them well to many a win which otherwise would have been a draw. Not so on this occasion, of course, as they were brought to heel by the Rupert/Derick combo, who have a pretty good success rate of their own. A great all round performance from Derick too, as he sparkled with a hat-trick of singles wins over Bub, Andy and Sam Willett. Rupert picked up the other singles and Abhay Tijare was the other Shark on duty. Two wins each for Bub and Sam and one from Andy made up the Hasbeens score.
Another draw came in the Friday night match at Wing, with Leighton Buzzard Avengers holding my top of table side MK Topspin in a fine match of swaying fortunes. Bernie Raffe and Alex Du Noyer hit a brace a-peice for the home boys, who also took the vital doubles through Alex/Cristi Hulpan. Topspin top man Jit Pitamber was in good form though with a hat-trick supplemented by single wins from Russell Penn and myself. A late, late show here with half the sets going to a decider.
These two draws left high flying Open University Primes as the only winners of the week, 6-4 against a rejuvenated Greenleys Princes thanks to two wins each from by Patrick Wong, Andy Tan and James Zeng. Princes sets came from Saravana Kuma (2), Mayuresh Gokhale (1) plus the doubles. William Egbuna was the other Princes man, whose fortunes have been transformed this month (with 29 points collected) after a not so Golden October, a miserly month for them that reaped a mere 3 points. Newly promoted Princes have also lifted themselves off the bottom for the first time, leaving Leighton Buzzard Van Hire to bring up the rear.
Only 3 matches this time as MK Pumas cried off in their scheduled match against Van Hire due to illness in their camp. As it happens, two of the Van men still played this week anyway as they received call-ups from the club’s Premier side, Generations. The fixture has been re-scheduled now for 6th January.
Player of the week : Derick Rodrigues