Contrasting fortunes for Cippenham's Senior British League teams

There were contrasting fortunes for Cippenham's Senior British League teams this weekend as they returned to action on their own turf.

The first team were missing the services of Shae Thakker and Martin Gray for their National Division A2 clashes this weekend and managed just one win and three losses over the course of the weekend. 

However, the men's 2nd team, playing in Division C5, were able to reverse that by securing three victories whilst losing just once, to divisional leaders Joola Plymouth 2nds.

 Without Shae and Martin, the first team comprised the same quartet of players that took to the tables for the first weekend of the league season eight weeks earlier.

In their first match against Horsham Spinners, the normally dependable Robert Hansell failed to win his opening game against Joe Sheard, going down 11-9 in a tight deciding game. It then got worse for Cippenham as Martin Adams was beaten by Jacob Evans, leaving the side's third and fourth seeded players to pull things around with Tom Windram overcoming Oscar Marriott 3-1 and Steve Munson getting the better of the unorthodox Rory Scott 3-0. When Hansell and Adams defeated Evans and Sheard in the doubles, a win looked to be on the cards, however, Hansell suffered his second close defeat of the game, losing to Evans and Sheard defeated Windram to make it 4-3. Adams dutifully squared the contest before     Oscar Marriott prevailed against Steve Munson to give the Sussex team a close-fought 5-4 win.

  Divisional leaders Wensum were also given a good game by Cippenham before prevailing 6-3.

 There were though, good wins for Munson over Veton Zeqiri and Robert Hansell won the battle of the top seeds against Lauren Charles while there was also a win in the doubles.

Sunday's play began well for Cippenham with Hansell and Adams winning close matches to put the hosts 2-0 up against Joola Plymouth.

But things went badly awry after that with the Devon side racing away for a 7-2 win. That hid the fact Tom Windram pushed Cutler to 11-9 in the fifth and Paul Giles needed a decider to beat Steve Munson.

The hosts were made for their victory, but it arrived in the final match of the weekend against Kingfisher, their rivals from Reading.

 Kingfisher were only able to field three players but for a while it looked like Cippenham may not be able to take full advantage. Hansell and Adams both lost to Anaya Patel and Harry Randall respectively and when Munson went down against Ryan Chung, they looked to be staring another defeat full in the face. However, a third doubles win steadied the ship and Hansell defeated Randall and Windram did likewise against Patel. That secured them a 5-4 win, with the conceded games and a league double over Kingfisher who were pushed into bottom place below Cippenham.

     The second team also opened their weekend with a game against Horsham Spinners 3rds, but they managed to reverse the scoreline to run out 5-4 winners.

  Jamie Woodford was player of the match with two wins over Graham Beaney and Oli Thorne while all the other Cippenham players contributed one win each. After losing 16-14 in the decider of the opening set against Josef Krakovsky, William Saint redeemed the situation with a 13-11 fifth-game win over Beaney while Mia Lakhani beat Asher Warshawski and Jaiden Caldeira defeated Thorne.

Saturday afternoon’s match against leaders Joola Plymouth 2nd resulted in only the hosts' second defeat of the season with the Plymouth side running out convincing 7-2 victors.

Cippenham’s only success came against Plymouth’s number four player Bailey Page who was beaten by both Lakhani and Caldeira.

 They did though get back to winning ways on Sunday morning with a 6-3 success over Devon side Newton Abbot. Having fallen 2-0 down it was left to Caldeira and Lakhani to repair the damage. This they did in superb fashion, winning both of their two matches with Caldeira scooping the player of the match nomination.

However, it was Lakhani who was particularly impressive in beating Mark Burridge.

The weekend concluded with another 6-3 victory over the Isle of Wight. This was another closely fought back in which five of the sets required a deciding game, with Cippenham winning three of them.  

Jaiden Caldeira was again nominated as the player of the match, but Jamie Woodford also won both of his matches.

After the points were totted up, Cippenham remain in second place, four points behind leaders Plymouth.