Melbourn lost 5-10

This week saw both Melbourn’s team facing opponents from Nuffield Health (St. Albans).The clash in Melbourn pitted the respective 1st teams up against each other. Some pre-match negotiations on who was playing which string and at what time on court, conducted between Kate for Melbourn and Nuffield skipper Gary as they know each other from the Masters circuit, resulted in the following match ups:

#1 Miles Jeanneret vs Gary Nisbett
#2 Kate Bradshaw vs Dylan Khoo
#3 Mark Oppen vs Teejay Sanguoro

First up was Kate vs Dylan. Kate was fresh off an impressive performance as she had starred as  England retained the Home Internationals trophy (Player of the Tournament no less) and she took this form back into the county league as she “played a blinder” to win 3-1 (15-12, 15-8, 12-15, 18-16).

This had taken long enough to complete that Teejay had made it to Melbourn so Mark was next on. Mark initially had the upper hand in this match, building a two-love lead, but Teejay gradually worked his way into it (car journey still in his legs initially??) and eventually came through 3-2. The game scores were (Mark first) 15-12, 15-11, 8-15, 6-15, 6-15.

That sent it to the top strings where Miles (~3300 on Squashlevels) was always going to have his hands full against Gary (~5500). It went with the form book as Miles gradually made Gary work a bit harder for games, but eventually fell 0-3 (6-15, 11-15, 13-15).

It all added up to a 10-5 win for the visitors to leave the 1sts on one win and two losses so far this summer.