There’s no stopping red-hot over-60s

THE County over-60s team, entered for the first time this season in this category, is going great guns so far, writes John Bowness.

Having won all three matches over the first weekend in Division 2B, they then had an odd match to pull in against Cambridgeshire in St Neots.

At the 11th hour the opposition’s woman player was injured and had to drop out, so Karen Smith, who is unbeaten so far in both singles and mixed doubles, did not have to travel as Cambs could not find a replacement in time.

This left Richard Hayes, Chris Brewer and Tony Smith requiring three of their seven sets to make sure of victory, but the County team were not content with that, powering forward to take all before them and never looking in trouble.

The final singles said it all when Hayes faced the opposition’s number one, who had been 100 per cent until this match. It was a cracker with Hayes two games and 7-2 down in the third before staging a remarkable recovery to take the fifth game 14-12 for an overall 10-0 scoreline.

With just two matches remaining Leicestershire are red-hot favourites for promotion.

It was a different story for the county veteran second team in their first two matches of the season. Beset by unavailability during a busy weekend, the team of Reza Kiani, Richard Hayes, Chris Brewer and Eileen Shaler fought hard to no avail.

Cheshire proved unstoppable and are the strongest team in the division of seven teams.

In the end it was Kiani who secured the one success to stave off the clean sweep for Cheshire to win 9-1, which they did in their other match.

Against Durham, Leicestershire fought all the way and could have gone either way with Hayes and Brewer both winning a singles while Hayes teamed up with Kiani for the men’s doubles success. Another victory came in the mixed when Hayes and Shaler won, but Durham shaded the match 6-4.

Hayes did well to win three sets in a singles as well as a hand in both doubles.

The weekend ended in a shambles when it was found that the organisers at Draycott had double-booked the following day so those matches for all seven teams will have to be rearranged.