Table toppers in promotion frame
Table Tennis: Cippenham top the standings ahead of Team Ecosse
Cippenham men’s team enjoyed a successful first weekend in the Veteran's British League Division 1B, topping the table ahead of closest rivals Team Ecosse on games ratio.
The Cippenham team won four of their opening five matches in Derby and now stand a very good chance to grabbing the single promotion spot back into the Premier Division when the competition resumes in the new year.
Team Ecosse looks to be the greatest threat to those promotion hopes, and they were the only team to beat Cippenham over the opening weekend.
With Cippenham’s number one seed Andy Trott unavailable for Saturday’s series of matches, Martin Adams, new signing Dave Barr and Hari Gehlot got the campaign underway.
They made an almost faultless start, defeating Draycott B 6-0 before following that with a confident 4-2 victory over Norwich.
Captain Adams led the team in both victories, winning both of his matches over Wayne Mason and Mats Olsson to claim the player of the match honours.
However, Saturday evening ended on a sour note with Team Ecosse a team of international Scotland players - closing out a 4-2 victory. Barr and Gehlot notched up impressive wins over Ross Martin and Jerry Campbell, but Adams wasn’t able to add to his victories earlier in the day.
Cippenham bounced back the following morning in a tight affair against Foresters. Three of the six encounters were extended to a deciding game, but Barr was their star player, overcoming both Andy Norwood and Lewis Mayhew to tip the balance in Cippenham's favour for a 4-2 win.
Gehlot and Andy Trott both completed crucial, high-pressure victories over Matt Spero to chalk a vitally important victory.
Cippenham then rounded off the weekend with a 5-1 win over Wolves, arguably the preseason favourites heading into the first weekend. They'd also previously defeated Team Ecosse 5-1.
Trott’s class prevailed as he recorded comfortable wins over the highly ranked Simon Pugh and Lee Horton, only losing a handful of points in each game, while Barr was also comfortable in his win over Horton, while both he and Adams claimed 3-1 victories over Steve Robinson.
Meanwhile, elsewhere in the same Derby arena venue, Cippenham’s second team were having a distinctly different and more difficult weekend and sit bottom of Division 4A going into the second half of the campaign.
They lost all five of their matches and will have a desperate battle to avoid relegation when the season resumes next year.
They went down 4-3 to Ormesby 2nds and DeVere NETTS, and lost 5-1 against BATTS 2nds, Draycott 4ths and Cirencester.
Mike Rhodes and Steve Smith both won three of their 10 individual matches over the weekend while Paul Baker tasted victory just once.
The Cippenham women’s team had a marginally better outcome in their Division 2 matches, although they also failed to win a match.
They drew 3-3 twice but lost their other matches 4-2 (twice) and 5-1. The team were also hampered by the absence of Mary Heffernan, who has been playing well in the High Wycombe League this season, and so the challenge fell to Julie Dean, Denise Weller, and Sue Hayes. to pick up points. Dean won one of her matches in each of the games to finish with a 50 per cent victory record, while Weller and Hayes both won three of their 10 matches.
The heaviest defeat came in their very first match against Sutton at Hone. They followed that with a 3-3 draw with Lyncrest in which all three Cippenham players managed a win, but Saturday concluded with a 4-2 defeat to Irish side Colleens.
All three players were again on the scoreboard in Sunday’s 3-3 draw with Ellenborough 2nds and the weekend concluded with another 4-2 defeat, this time at the ends of Milton Keynes.