Thursday 18 March 2010

Grange 4 vs Crooks 2 (a.k.a CCS5) - Wednesday 18th March 2010

The Grange youth team (plus one elder statesman) turned out against a CCS5 side that we'd just managed to defeat in the first round and had the tables turned on them with narrow loss that once again boiled down to the very last rally of the night as to who would take the bonus points. It has to be said that it was lovely to play on nice warm courts since the school had fixed the heating, although it did seem like some of the Grange players had a little difficulty adjusting to normality again after weeks of ice-box condtions.

First up was Will Henderson at No 1 against Gareth Wright. A good solid start gave will a 9-7 victory in the first but he was well and truly put under the kosh for a 3-9 in the next. A see-saw struggle just went to Will 10-9 and then Gareth turned up the heat to leave Will pretty well beaten 1-9 and 2-9 for a 2-3 loss. One item worthy of note was the let the Gareth was given for the back wall boast that he refrained from playing while Will was plastered to the back wall himself. Nobody could recall having seen that situation arise before but it was the only shot that Gareth could have played to stay in the rally and umpire Forbes was perfectly correct in his let call.

Richard Nisbet went on at no 5 against Mark Williamson and proceeded to play some mixed squash to find himself 5-9 and 5-9 down in the two games. He then went into something of a decline as numerous unforced errors saw him facing match point at 3-8. That rally proceeded as most of that game had gone so far and Richard ended up playing a pretty lame spooned retrieval shot to leave Mark standing in the centre of the court with the easiest and most 100% certain match-winning winning shot in the history of squash itself, which he duly tinned. Never can a missed opportunity have been so regretted as little lights went on in Richard's eyes and he then proceeded to win the next seven rallies and then the next two games 9-6 and 9-6 for one of the most unlikely reversals of fortune that this little black duck has ever witnessed.

Then followed Mark Dutton at No 3 against Adrian Craxton. The match started as most of Mark's do with plenty of confusion being wrought and cheap points being won by bizarre and unorthodox serving. Unfortunately Adrian cottoned on quicker than most this season as to what to do to neutralise the tricksy hobbit stuff and that left Mark a bit bereft of ideas. Adrian played a good solid match and simply kept patrolling the red line and cutting off the majority of Mark's attempts to play the ball deep and the result was a 7-9, 5-9, 6-9 loss for the captain. Hope had revived momentarily in the last game as a couple of disputed calls finally put some purpose and drive into Mark's squash (recognise a euphemism when you hear one..?) but it was all too late and it only took a couple of streaky nicks to finish him off at the death (a deserved death it was too).

Gordon Sloan went on at No 3 against Adam Hill and preserved his 100% season winning record in the teams by two cunning expedients, namely ..(a) winning 9-1, 9-0 and finally 10-8 in a much harder fought final game; and (b) declaring himself unavailable for next week's team match so there's no chance of the unbeaten record going west. Now why didn’t I think of that….

It all came down to Ian Forbes at No 2 against James Chalmers. We Grange folk had already banked the win in our minds after the easy 9-0 win in the first game, then quickly unbanked it again as James showed his mettle (and Ian showed some unforced errors) to take it 3-9. A fairly comfortably won 9-4 got us all relaxed again followed by a thorough 2-9 thrashing in the fourth game to get the Grange ulcers once again working overtime. The final game was a see-saw struggle with points shared until a quite astonishing sequence of four identical nicks from James into the exact same spot near the front of the backhand wall. Every one of them was from an identically played boasted recovery shot by James from the back forehand corner and Ian was on hand at the front for all of them but the nick beat him every time….queue a sequence of alternating wails of anguish and wry smiles from Ian. The truth is though that a bit too much damage was done in the last game through Ian's own unforced errors and the normally very reliable Mr Forbes went down 8-9 in the fifth.

All up that meant it ended 12-16 and represents only Grange 4's second loss of the season. Good job that the huge piece of silverware had already been engraved with our name last week…….

4 comments:

Christy said...

I hereby award Mark Dutton "Team Captain of the Season" for being to the fore in volunteering to find last minute replacements all season, running a great kitty and going the extra mile in his match reports and their funny incidents.

He definitely made life easier for the club captain, even when dropped by him ;-) Fair play, Mark and congrats to all who contributed to the fours, successful in their first year of existence.

al said...

Hear, hear! To think this time last year we weren't sure we could field a 4th team at all, and we just went and won the league. 5th team? watch this space...

al said...

Mr Forbes! I hope that wasn't you who called "set one" at match ball in the final deciding game of the night?

Unknown said...

I think the final score was actually 10-8