A high quality array of competitors produced some wonderful and exciting table tennis as the Maidenhead & District Association held its annual championships at Cippenham on Saturday.

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Twenty players, including all of the top players from Division 1, contested the Championship Singles. They were drawn into five groups of four players each with the group winners being the Prasanna Kumar brothers, Sai and Bharath, plus two other Cippenham stars in Maciej Dlugozima and Louis Alexander together with Gary Crick from the Cookham Social club. The only surprise from the group stage was the double defeat for Michal Garski by Gary Crick (not so much a surprise!) and Peter Chipperton. In Michal's defence, he was obviously still very much handicapped by the serious hand injury he suffered a few months ago.

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The second-placed players also qualified for the knock-out phase and these were Elroy Hull, Akeel Mir, Hari Prasad, Peter Chipperton and Chris Collins. The first round saw the elimination of Akeel, by Hari, and Peter, by Collins.

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The quarter-finals saw the defending champion Sai beat Hari over four games, as did Bharath against Crick, Louis eliminating Elroy 3-0, as did three-times champion Maciej against Collins. Maciej did not contest the championship in 2024, had won in both 2023 and 2022, but was now up against the new breed of youngsters emerging from Ken Phillips' coaching regime at Cippenham.

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Amongst those youngsters is Sai Prasanna Kumar, champion in 2024, when still only ten years old, and unbeaten in singles encounters across his two years of competing in the Maidenhead League. The semi-final draw pitched him against his older brother Bharath, the current Cippenham club champion. This turned out to be a match of epic proportions that swung one way and then the other with fast attacking play from both players. Eventually it was Sai who prevailed 11-7 in the fifth game. The other semi was just as close with Maciej opening up a two-game lead only for Louis to edge the third 14-12. That spurred Louis on and the Cippenham Junior Player of the Year saw out the fourth and fifth games of the match 11-6, 11-7.

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The final did not quite match the spectacle of the semi-finals as Louis, after a first game romp, won the next two in much closer fashion to inflict upon Sai his first ever singles defeat in a Maidenhead League competition.

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Running alongside the main Championship Singles was the Division 2 Singles for players from the lower division. A five-player round-robin group proved successful for the Cippenham duo with Rohit Varshney, unbeaten in the League this season, winning comfortably while Randall Rodrigues secured second place.

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Louis was denied a clean sweep of the championship events when in the doubles, partnered by Bharath, they were defeated by another Cippenham partnership in Sai and Hari.

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Despite being the most heavily handicapped player ion the draw, Sai was more than equal to the task and won the Handicap Singles, while the Handicap Doubles, for which the partners were drawn randomly, was won by Louis, partnered by Chris Collins.