Tight tussle to find the season’s most improved player

FOLLOWING my piece about gradings last week, one of the intriguing issues at this time of the year in the Leicester League is to find who has improved by the most during the season, writes John Bowness.

Almost always it is an improving junior moving up the ranks.

Bearing in mind this is entirely unofficial and purely my calculations, there appears to be a very tight tussle between four players who look to have improved their mark by more than 30 points.

Two juniors seem to be involved which does not include Andy West who started the season in Division Five on 77 and looks to have improved this for KPXIV to 108 for plus 31.

Another KP player, this time in Division One, is Pawel Szumlanski who could move from 180 to 213, an increase of 33.

Inevitably, however, two juniors look to be vying for the most improved with Kai Bhakta having his first season in Division One for Winstanley and gaining a probable grading of 234 as opposed to his 199 upon starting.

Meanwhile, Dillon Kearney moved from five to three for Fleckney to reach 167 for his 73 per cent from 131 – plus 36 against Bhakta’s plus 35.

But much will depend on the calibre of their opponents and whether they tended to face the higher graded players where one or two points become crucial.

The Leicester League has been busy with National League events recently with the Ladies having a very tight little group to contend with, the team being Karen Smith and

Jessica Birbeck. First up was Loughborough in a crucial encounter who were represented by the two Millies, Noble and Ufton, with Karen showing her experience by winning both singles as well as the doubles.

Match of the day featured Jessica and Millie Noble with the Leicester lady winning the first two with some strong hitting before Millie fought back to win 16-14.

The final two games were agonisingly close before the Loughborough player took both 11-9, but Leicester got home 3-2.

The match against Nottingham was also close with Karen again winning two but this time the doubles went to the opposition and despite some very close games it was a 3-2 loss.

However, two went through to the national finals so Leicester will be one of the quarter-finalists.

The two other events featured the men, Adam Pettitt and James Berry, in the Wilmott Cup while Dillon Kearney and Aiden Cheng represented Leicester in the Carter Cup for boys.

Both groups were exceedingly strong so Leicester will be represented by Ladies only this year.