Cippenham climb out of drop zone
Senior British League side leapfrog rivals Ellenborough
Cippenham Senior British League 1st team were at full strength for the first time this season and an excellent 8-1 win over Ellenborough on Saturday morning saw them leapfrog their rivals to climb out of the relegation zone in Division A-2.
Cippenham’s second team also won their first match of the weekend, but results took a turn for the worse in the afternoon for both teams.
Cippenham 1sts romped to victory in their first match against opponents from Enfield. The only blemish on their copy book was Martin Gray’s 3-2 loss to Percy Collino but other than that it was smooth sailing.
Player of the match Shae Thakker gave Cippenham the perfect start with a 3-0 win over James Sprackling and he also later got the better of England number one veteran Sara Williams.
Martin Adams also beat Williams and his win over Jimmy Walsh featured an 11-0 whitewash in the second game.
Robert Hansell also enjoyed a great hame, beating both Walsh and Sprackling while sharing in a doubles success with Adams.
Buoyed by the morning’s big win, Cippenham went into their afternoon fixture with thirdplaced Finsbury full of confidence, but Thakker found Finsbury’s number one, Munib Ahmad, too hot to handle in the opening match. Robert Hansell evened things up with a closely fought win over Emil Erkekov. Martin Adams put Cippenham back in front when he beat Abdullah Ubaidullah but Jonathan Lancy’s win over Martin Gray got Finsbury back on level terms again. An uncharacteristic loss in the doubles put Cippenham on the backfoot but Hansell saved his
best for his singles match against Ahmad, winning 3-1 in determined fashion. Two 3-0 games followed as Thakker was beaten by Ubaidullah and Gray eased to victory over Erkekov to make it 4-4, but Martin Adams failed to make the most of his 2-0 lead against Lancry as his opponents won the third, fourth and fifth games to seal an exciting 5-4 win for Finsbury.
With several players unavailable for the second team, Cippenham introduced its newest star, Louis Alexander, for the side’s National C-5 Division matches.
Alexander took his opportunity superbly in their 6-3 win over Gwent and was nominated player of the match after claiming victories over Mark Farrow and Sam Slatter, He also shared in a
doubles win with Jaiden Caldeira.
William Saint also contributed a brace of wins over Jack Fletcher and Toby Harwood while Cippenham’s other win was secured by Jamie Woodford over Harwood. This win over Gwent avenged a defeat to the same opponents in the first half of the season.
However, the afternoon match against Bristol Associates was a different story. This time it was Bristol who gained revenge for an earlier defeat to Cippenham as they ran out comprehensive 7-2 victors.
William Saint and Jamie Woodford won the doubles set but Cippenham’s only other win came when Woodford defeated Jake Tucker. The Cippenham second team remain second in their division but any hopes of winning the title are now gone.