PREMIER
Two drawn matches and a massive win for leaders MK Spinners, who even at this early stage are looking good to regain the title, were played out this week.
There was a time when the result of the Spinners/Greenleys Monarchs clashes determined the destiny of the title race but, alas, no longer. In this latest edition of their contests a rampant Spinners side ran away with the match, only Tomek Nowakowski stopping the whitewash with a victory against Gary Jones. Otherwise it was all plain sailing for Gary, in his wins over Dave Beddall and Martin Hall, and defensive minded team-mates Tim Cheek and Jecu Aurelian, both with great hat-tricks.
MK Pumas remain the only other unbeaten team after being held to a draw at fellow promotees Leighton Buzzard Van Hire, who were giving a debut to Ian Doughty. Ian, the League’s 1986 Singles champion, has made more comebacks than ‘old blue eyes’ himself ever did and good luck to him this time round, but no wins so far. Biao Wang, on the other hand, is in terrific form and ran out an easy winner in all his sets. Van Hire took the doubles and David Broome saved the day for them in the final set by beating Julie Snowdon. Andy Smith and Hakan Karaagac made up the Pumas trio.
The Greenleys derby between Warriors and Kings turned out to be quite a match with no less than 6 sets going the distance, 4 of them in a row going to title defenders Kings when 3-1 down, only for Warriors to fight back and square an intriguing contest in which all players won either one or two sets each. Kings’ Ricky Taiwo opened the proceedings with yet another big name scalp, Steve Silk. to add to his impressive collection. Steve had been an occasional reserve for Monarchs for over a decade before registering for Warriors, and beat Danny Sedgwick here while also losing to a barn storming Adebola Odetayo. Guy Sparrow and 2011 League Singles champion Parveen Garg completed the Warrior side.
Player of the week : Tim Cheek
DIVISION 1
POWERS TAKE CONTROL
After a fortnight of evenly fought out matches we saw only one-sided contests this time round. It seems that, at last, we are sorting out the ‘wheat’ from the ‘chaff’ in this Division.
MK Hit ‘n’ Run played clubmate sides for the 3rd week running. Leaders Powers wheeled out the big guns here so there were few problems for Sarah Hudson, Minesh Pitamber and Pete Tillotson in dishing out a 9-1 pasting. Paul Tompkins was the sole winner for Hit ‘n’ Run when beating Pete in the penultimate set. Ivor Howard and Andy Frearson also played.
Similar successes too for the other MK teams Phoenix and Topspin, both 8-2 winners. Phoenix’ Gerald Ridgway dropped both his team’s sets, losing to Jacob Midson and Scott Dixon, while colleagues Mervyn Phillips and Alan Bolding hit trebles. Christine Scaysbrook was the other Glory player.
Just the one hat-trick involved in the Topspin win over Open University Primes, although it was the most magnificent one of the week from my Topspin team-mate Mervyn Kelly, with only 52 points conceded all match (3 straight game wins for an average of less than 6 per game!!). Primes’ Andy Tan won the points for his side with personal triumphs against Russell Penn and myself. Ning He and James Zeng were the other Primes’ players.
The final match saw Leighton Buzzard Avengers beat Chackmore Hasbeens 7-3 with a Leigh Hurkett treble and a brace apiece from Bernie Raffe and Christinel Hulpan. Bub Burman and Chris Whitehead grabbed the Hasbeens’ wins with Andy Whitehead enjoying a doubles success with Bub. Avengers meet Topspin next week in top 3 clash that should prove an to be intriguing one.
Player of the week : Mervyn Kelly