Division 2 Roundup - Week 21
Van Hire on the Verge
The final scheduled week of fixtures has seen Leighton Buzzard Van Hire virtually assure themselves of finishing as runners-up, with a win to move them up to second place, with just one game left to play, and barring a hugely unlikely 0-10 loss in that last match, they will come second in the final table.
In this week's matches, champions Greenleys Princes produced a hard-fought win, 7-3, in their final match of the season against Open University Shockwaves, with two singles wins each for Ricky Jackson, Anand Keshav and Saravana Kumar, plus the doubles by Anand and Saravana against the Shockwaves pairing of Tiger Tan and Yifan Liu. For Shockwaves, Tiger won two singles, whilst their third win was courtesy of D5 reserve, Afra Tian.
Earlier in the week, Little Horwood Wooden Tops had produced a 6-4 win against Mursley Hawks, to temporarily move up to second place in the table, although they knew that Van Hire were favourites to move back above them. Player of the night was Paul Reynolds, who won a maximum, although Ian Spanswick pushed him to 12-10 in the fifth. Andy Hooper and Bill Higgins each also won one singles for Wooden Tops, whilst for Hawks, there were two singles wins for Mark Dixon and one for David Bartlett, but they lost out in the doubles to Paul and Bill.
The final match of the week saw Van Hire collect a 7-3 win against Woburn Sands Mosquitoes, with star of the show being Van Hire's Donnie McDonald with a treble. The other Van Hire wins were two from Christi Hulpan, one for Richard Hardy, plus the doubles by Christi and Bernie Raffe (who only played doubles). For Mosquitoes, James Molloy gained two wins and Rob McPheat won one, with Rob and Andy Jenkins losing out in the doubles. The win was enough to move Van Hire back up to second place, still with a match in hand.
The final League match in the Division takes place next Thursday, aa Hawks play Van Hire, as the original match was called off due to a power cut! Technically, Hawks could move up from fifth to second, above Van Hire, but that would require a massively unlikely 10-0 win to Hawks.
Whilst the League schedule is effectively finished, there are still two Division 2 teams in the last eight of the Challenge Cup. Next Tuesday will see Wooden Tops take a 110 point advantage against the last remaining D1 team, Milton Keynes Topspin, whilst Hawks have to overcome a 250 point handicap against Division 6's Great Brickhill Badgers.
Player of the Week : Donnie McDonald.
Team of the Week : Leighton Buzzard Van Hire.