Melbourn won 18-7

Feeling like it was only days after the end of the Herts Summer League (27 to be precise) the 2nds were back in action for the main course of each season – the Cambs Winter Leagues. Five player teams, two courts of Squash and a maximum of 20 points on offer. The full dish.

Our first flavour of the new banquet was a familiar one as we took on a Peterborough team who we have shared this Division with for a few seasons now. Both teams were missing some faces from previous seasons due to departures from the respective clubs, but there was still a sense of old (definitely old!) frenemies in confrontation.

The first match on would prove to be the critical one of the evening as Moises Estrelles Navarro (5) took on a new opponent, Danial Slad. Gareth’s assessment was: Effects of the first team match of the season, holiday and nerves were all on show in the first game. The energy was there but the accuracy was not, and after a frustrating start Moises was always chasing a significant deficit. No joy in the first.  Quick pep talk during the first break and things started to turn around. Still scrappy in the second but Moises came out on top and seemed to be looking more controlled. Another pep talk and a slightly more relaxed Moises was back on court and growing in confidence and accuracy. 2-1. No more pep talk needed. Moises is back! 3-1. Never in doubt (apart from when it was...).
The editor adds: Moises started ice cold, going for drop shots that weren’t tight enough, allowing Danial to run them down. He fell 10-1 behind in the opener on the back of this. Going more conservative worked, because it was playing to Moises strengths (movement, tenacity), too late to save the first 9-15, but enough to convince Moises that Dan wasn’t actually “too good” as he had claimed after the opener and Moises could work his way back to victory… but it was going to take work and running, without any shortcuts available to him to keep rallies short and easy. Once he knuckled down: 9-15, 15-10, 15-12, 15-9.

Next to start was Colm O’Gorman (3) against Carlos Corriea. Carlos was complete with his trademark golf glove, but from the outset it was Colm’s Irish tenacity that was the critical factor. His speed in chasing down Carlos’ attempts to break the game up was pressuring the Peterborough player, who was consequently trying too much and just plain getting it wrong – reader, I’ve never seen as many errors from his racquet. He is usually far more consistent than that. Colm was all for taking gift horses in the first game, keeping a constant pressure up from the outset to build an 8-2 lead and cruise through the rest.
Game two was a peach as far as Colm was concerned, and rotten to the core for Carlos as, from 0-2 down, Colm put together 13 consecutive winning rallies to set himself up for an easy convert. When Colm raced out to a 4-1 lead in game three it seemed he would just blow Carlos away. Maybe he believed his own hype because suddenly Colm went AWOL and lost 6 rallies in a row. Given how our skip was feeling the match, incredibly, was somehow in the balance again (if it had gone 2-1 it was anybody’s). However Colm seemed to completely appreciate this as he refocused determinedly and re-established the game two pattern to rattle off 10 straight points. That gave him eight match balls – he only needed two, rounding off a 15-7, 15-5, 15-8 win.

Following Moises match Matt Walker (4) against Pierre Caruso. And, well, these players have played before and it has generally gone Matt’s way. In terms of a style match-up this was excellent from Melbourn’s perspective as Pierre was looking to attack front corners from deep, which just played the ball in for Matt’s counter-punch kills. Which is his game.
The first game involved some errors on Matt’s part as he sought his range, but even so he always held the lead by at least a couple of points and usually more, getting over the line comfortably enough in the end. Pierre cut off to quick starts in both game two and three, leading the second 4-0 and the third 5-2, but these were very false dawns. Matt was now basically into his stride, forcing Pierre deep and then cutting the ball out on the drop volley – aka Walkertactics. This led to substantial runs of points as Pierre found rallies ended before he had had a chance to establish the patterns he wanted: Matt won 15-10, 15-6, 15-9.

The second match on Court 1 pitted Gareth Jones (2) against Renzo Rozza Gonzalez. This was not the ideal match up from Gareth’s point of view as Renzo’s game is to be rapid, get things back and try to be just consistent. This meant it was on the Melbourn players racquet… which doesn’t always work out well! Game one saw multiple lead changes (7 by my count) as Gareth found a rhythm and method… and then got over-ambitious and tried to play with more creativity rather than just the hard grind. However two players can make mistakes and it was a pair of critical ones from Renzo at the death that saw the game fall Melbourn’s way 15-13.
A good start. One to get the confidence up. Gareth was flying, and in full belief attempted to dominate things with an array of extravagant early kills. That meant that 3 minutes into the game he found himself 1-12 down after an array of tins. Facepalm. Renzo maintained solid consistency through this and just let Gareth get on with it. Which was sensible. Faced with the inevitable Gareth reined things back in the latter stages, getting his score up to 9 before he ran out of time. But this incomplete recovery did at least instil belief and show the method, which was called for when Gareth once again found himself trailing in game three, thought this time a more manageable 5-10 down. This prompted a spell of controlled Squash, Gareth at his best, which picked up 6 straight points to lead 11-10… and once ahead the aggressive, end-the-point-NOW Gareth re-emerged. 11-13. No. Buckle down. Grind him until he makes a mistake. This works, four straight points gained as Renzo makes the errors and Gareth was 2-1 up.
However, isn’t a style Gareth enjoys playing and as he tired he revert more-and-more to death-or-glory Squash. Foot movement ceasing, kill attempts from the back corners growing. But Renzo is a fit fella, and was still too fast over the ground for this. So the style was either being picked off on the counter drop, or resulting in errors as Gareth tried to go even tighter to avoid being picked off. And that saw things slip away to a 15-13, 9-15, 15-13, 12-15, 10-15 defeat.

Last one was Jan Brynjolffssen (1), who knew what he was going to get against Tim Millington, who has an array of blood-twisting holds. But forewarned is not necessarily forearmed. The opening game saw Jan struggling, particularly in the later part as his legs struggled to give the needed explosiveness, and it escaped fairly tamely. Game two saw Jan attempt to step up the court, and get his drop shots in earlier, on the thought that “why doesn’t Tim do the chasing in this game”. This worked well. No it worked very well. Stupendously so, in fact, to the point of winning the game 15-3. However, there was a suspicion that Tim had waved it goodbye once the score got to 9-3, which was backed up by the next going the Peterborough player’s way nearly as decisively.
Jan regrouped, regathered himself and tried to remember what had worked: high ‘T’, be ready to move, take it early, believe in the drops. OK, OK… oh, this is working. Not like game two because Tim is going to fight to the death in this game with victory so lose, but well enough. Jan had his nose ahead throughout, and though he blew three game balls a bit of a gift of an error from Tim on the fourth saw him home. Two games all. The decider was nip-and-tuck: first Tim led (3-1), than Jan (5-3), then it was level pegging for a period. Jan got himself 11-9 up… and was then 13-12 down. It got to 13-all, but this time at the death it was Jan who made the errors, going for too much on penultimate point and then putting a drop shot down on match ball, a rare miss on a day when they had worked well. But a vitally important one. Jan lost 8-15, 15-3, 6-15, 15-13, 13-15.

Three strings to two overall, but the two lost were 3-2s. So 18 points in total, to Peterborough’s 7. A good start for the team, with the pre-season worries that the loss of players from the strong term of last terms was going to seriously undermine us, if not yet fully allayed at least tamped down for a while.