It was mission accomplished for both Cippenham teams as the Senior British League season concluded over the weekend. For the first team, the priority was to retain sixth position in the National Division A-2 table and thereby avoid relegation back to Division B from where they had been promoted last season as champions. The Cippenham second team had their sights at the other end of their table in a quest to retain second place in Division C-5 and earn the runners-up medals.

 

The opening matches on Saturday morning were quite a contrast. While the first team were up against eventual divisional champions Woodford Wells, the second team had a much easier task against Generation 2 who failed to win a match all season. Those matches ran true to form with the first team losing 8-1 and the second team winning 7-2. Tom Windram’s win over Zoltan Hosszu was the first team’s only success while William Saint, Jamie Woodford and Jaiden Caldeira all bagged braces and Anna Piercey added another in the second team’s winning performance.

 

Things, though, really came to a head on Saturday afternoon. Both teams had what appeared at the time to be “must win” matches and both teams faced opposition from the Horsham Spinners club. After the first round of singles, both scores stood at 2-2 and six of those eight sets had gone the distance to a deciding game.

 

Martin Gray opened up for the Cippenham first team against the Horsham first team with a 12-10 fifth-game win over Jacob Evans and then Rob Hansell suffered a loss by the same score despite being two games and 10-7 up in the third when an unfortunate stray ball into his court led to a disputed “let call”. Tom Windram then lost 11-8 in the fifth against Rory Scott before Martin Adams secured an easier 3-0 victory over Ugur Saglik.

 

The Cippenham second team, up against Horsham thirds got off to a great start when Jamie Woodford beat Graham Beaney 3-1. However, the next two matches, William Saint against Dean Rose and Anna Piercey against Josef Krakovsky, were both lost in five before Jaiden Caldeira evened up the score with a nail-biting 12-10 fifth-game success against Oli Thorne.

 

Cippenham then won both doubles matches and both teams found themselves 3-2 up. The next three singles matches went 2-1 against Cippenham on both sides of the hall and so both matches were now squared at 4-4. The tension was high! Tom Windram faced Saglik in the top match while Anna Piercey was faced with Thorne in the lower division. Both matches went 1-0, 1-1, 1-2, 2-2 with both fourth games won at deuce. To the delight of the Cippenham contingent in their own hall, Tom and Anna both won the important fifth games to secure two vital league points for their teams.

 

Both teams had matches against high-flyers on Sunday morning. The first team did well against second-placed Wensum to recover from 3-0 down to 3-3 but then ran out of steam and lost 6-3. The second team gave divisional winners Joola Plymouth 2 an enormous fright, going 4-3 up with two wins from Jamie and one apiece from William and Anna before succumbing 5-4.

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The final matches of the season saw the Cippenham first team pitched against Joola Plymouth’s first team and an evenly-matched contest saw Cippenham eventually lose 5-4. The Cippenham second team were faced with having to match Bristol Associates’ result in order to stay ahead of the west country side and clinch second position in the division. However, Bristol were up against Plymouth, already divisional champions, and lost 8-1 and so it really did not matter what Cippenham did. To their credit, they brushed aside a formidable Newton Abbot team 6-3 with all their team members contributing and Jaiden excelling with two good wins.