Cippenham’s two teams had mixed fortunes during the one-day third weekend of the Senior British Clubs League, both suffering heavy defeats on Saturday morning but bouncing back to secure important victories in the afternoon. For the Club’s second team, the afternoon success was especially satisfying coming as it did from a patched-up team due to an indefensible clash of dates by the national association which pitched the County Championships Junior Premier Division on the same date. Four Cippenham players were on duty for Buckinghamshire and therefore unavailable to represent their club.

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The Cippenham first team’s 8-1 defeat by Fusion 2 in the morning was actually a closer match than the scoreline would suggest. Four of the nine individual encounters were decided late in the final game and were all won by the team from south London. Cippenham’s only success came from captain Martin Adams who beat Emran Hussain 3-1.

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The afternoon match against Urban second team, however, saw the tables turned as Cippenham won an exciting encounter 5-4 to jump from seventh to sixth place and out of the potential relegation zone against their fifth-placed opponents. Dave Barr was Cippenham’s star, winning a close opening set against Sam Cowan and then completing his brace with a great 3-0 win against Mateusz Mikosz that drew the match score level at 3-3. Cippenham had earlier gone 2-0 up after Rob Hansell had also beaten Mikosz but Andy Norwood’s defeat by Costas Papantoniou and Martin Adams’ by Tommy Gritton followed by an unsuccessful doubles match had left Cippenham in a perilous 2-3 position. Then Dave completed his brace and Andy put Cippenham ahead again with a clean 3-0 win over Cowan. Cippenham might have expected Rob to clinch the match against Gritton but that was not to be and it was left to Martin to finally clinch the much-needed league points with a close 3-2 win against Papantoniou.

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The second team’s progress during the day followed a similar pattern. A 9-0 defeat by divisional leader Bristol Associates may seem conclusive enough but only one of the sets finished 3-0 and Cippenham were on the wrong end of no less than eight deuce games.

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However, the dreadful weather came partly to Cippenham’s rescue in the afternoon match as one of the Horsham Spinners first team players failed to arrive due to train cancellations and that pushed the Horsham third team’s top player up into their other team and left Cippenham’s opponents a player short. Maciej Dlugozima, called in to bolster the team due to the availability of most of the regular players, became the star for the host club, winning the player of the match award for his wins over Paul Beck and Dean Rose, albeit both by narrow two-point margins in the deciding game. Jaiden Caldeira and Sai Prasanna Kumar both added a win over Zac Heap while Bharath Prasanna Kumar was unlucky to lose out in his only singles, against the vastly experienced Beck, 12-10 in the fifth, and by an even closer margin, with brother Sai, in the doubles.