Season off to great start

Cippenham Table Tennis Club got the brand new season off to a flying start with the inaugural events in the new Cippenham Series. The Cippenham Series is a grand prix style competition over six weekends culminating in May 2009. Players are awarded points for their performances over the season and monetary prizes will be awarded to the most successful at the end of the season. Each weekend consists of two open tournaments and this weekend saw the first senior and junior events take place.

Winner of the main event on Sunday, the Men’s Singles, was top seed Neil Charles. Charles, who played for Cippenham during the period 1996-1998, was pushed all the way in the final by Owen Clutterbuck. In a match that swung one way and then the other the two left-handers slugged it out for the top prize. Charles eventually prevailed 12-10 in the deciding fifth game of an entertaining match. First game went easily to Charles but Clutterbuck, a Welshman who has signed to play for Cippenham’s second team in the upcoming British League season, then clawed his way back into the match and led 2-1. Charles responded in fine fashion to square at 2-2 and there was rarely more than a single point between the players as the final game had the spectators enthralled.

Clutterbuck had enjoyed the less troubled route to the final. Only Andrew Misseldine in Round 2 took a game off him whereas Charles had suffered that fate twice; in his quarter-final with Neil Wright and the semi-final against Reece Tan. The talented youngster Tan had beaten the host club’s best hope, third seed David Hayes, in Round 2 and then eliminated another Cippenham player Mark Jackson in the quarter-final. However, apart from Clutterbuck, Cippenham were further represented in the last four by surprise semi-finalist Rafique Sarhadi. Sarhadi has been practising at Cippenham during the past few weeks and was persuaded to enter. It was a wise move as he carved a furrow through the field with wins over Steve Kerns and Simon Dilkes amongst others.

The Women’s Singles was played as a round robin of nine players so there was a feast of table tennis for all. The title was decided after a two-way tie was split by Jurate Brazaityte’s win over her Kent colleague Jasmin Ould along the way. Charleigh Kirby, who had beaten Brazaityte, came third while Cippenham’s own Sue Hayes finished in fourth place after a three-way tie with Tressa Armitage and Taylor Williams.

On Saturday Staffordshire’s James Ward won the Boys’ Singles to get his Series title hopes off to the best possible start. He saw off the young starlet and aptly named Ping Ho three-straight in the final but had received his sternest test in the semi-final. There he had needed all five games to recover from a two-game deficit to defeat Da Shuai Zhang. The other semi was also a tight affair with Cippenham’s Edward Mitchell, who has missed a lot of training through the summer because of a wrist injury, giving second best to top seed Ho only at 12-10 in the fifth after recovering from two games down.

Jasmin Ould, runner-up in the Women’s Singles on Sunday, had a similar result in the Girls’ Singles on Saturday. After surviving a deuce call in the fifth game of her semi with Charleigh Kirby, Ould gave second best to Feifei Pei in the final. Pei’s hardest encounter was back in the quarter-final when she just got the better of Evangeline Collier 15-13 in the fifth.

The consolation events were won by Earl Sweeney, Eddie Freeman and Tressa Armitage. The best Cippenham performances came from Salman Tanveer in reaching the final of the boys’ consolation and Tony Stead in reaching the semi of the men’s event. Paul Baker and Anthony Gardner were quarter-finalists in this and the latter enjoyed a great win over Cippenham British League player Steve Smith en route.

Results:

Event	Winner	Runner-up
Men’s Singles	Neil Charles (Middx)	Owen Clutterbuck (Wales)
Women’s Singles	Jurate Brazaityte (Kent)	Jasmin Ould (Kent)
Boys’ Singles	James Ward (Staffs)	Ping Ho (Middx)
Girls’ Singles	Feifei Pei (Surrey)	Jasmin Ouold (Kent)
Men’s Consolation	Earl Sweeney (Warks)	Philip Walker (Essex)
Boys’ Consolation	Eddie Freeman (Staffs)	Salman Tanveer (Slough)
Girls’ Consolation	Tressa Armitage (Hants)	Taylor Williams (Wales)