Melbourn lost 6-20

On the back of our first defeat of the season the week before the 2nds welcomed the Uni 2nds to the club, hoping to bounce straight back to winning ways (reader: we didn’t manage!).
First on was teenager Will Bradshaw (5), making a welcome seasonal debut for us as he took on Shashank Bhandari. Will was the only Melbourn player to have youth on his side, but this initially manifested itself as impatience with everything an attempted kill. This didn’t work and lead to the rapid loss of the opening game. Between game chat provided a confidence boost for Will (“Yes, you can beat this guy… you just need to work the rallies for it!”) and this lead to three much better games to follow – that many as Will won the middle one of them… but only three as Shashank took the other two. Game three showed all the signs that Will’s breakthrough win in adult Squash is really only just around the corner as he chased hard, created openings and kept rallies alive until his opponent made mistakes. If he can start like that next time he may improve on the 5-15, 12-15, 15-12, 11-15 outcome.

Next door Jamie Ware (4) was taking on Ollie Norton. This started extremely well for Jamie as his hard chasing was getting under Ollie’s skin, leading to errors from the Cambridge players racket. That gave Jamie a comfortable win in the opening game… but when he came off the intensity for the next two Ollie was ready to take advantage to win the next two. What Jamie needed was to build and work the rally, keeping the ball deep to draw errors. An effective but exhausting way to play. He managed this for the rest of the match, but come the fifth (which he forced by winning the fourth) Ollie knew he no longer needed to hold anything back and that was enough to send Jamie to a narrow 15-7, 9-15, 8-15, 15-12, 11-15 loss.

The third match to get underway pitted Matt Walker (3) against Peter Brealey. This was something of a contrast of styles as Matt attempted to deploy his usual pattern of deep drives and then stepping in for volley drop kills, whilst Peter was more about defending and trying to force an error from an opponent who was over-extending to end things. Which approach would come out on top? Well, for most of game 1 the answer appeared to be “neither” as this ran and ran. Peter had the first two games balls at 14-12 but Matt saved them with clutch rallies, then forced one of his own… which Peter neatly saved. Back and forth it went until Matt eventually claimed it on his sixth game ball as he forced a forehand error on the stretch from his opponent. Buoyed by this Matt opened up an initial lead in the second, but from 6-3 up he rather lost his way as Peter’s approach began to pay dividends – errors lead to 11 points out of 14 against and despite some late resistance it was 1-1. But Matt wasn’t done as game three saw him back in nip-and-tuck exchanges. Peter was mostly a nose ahead through most of it, but some key points won at the death saw Matt get to game ball first at 14-13… which he didn’t convert. Peter then had two chances which he, in turn, failed to make the most of with Matt instead claiming his second tie-breaker game.
Great, but Matt now looked exhausted – well he was giving 30 years to his opponent! With feet no longer moving as swiftly he fell well behind in game four. Grit came out to make Peter sweat towards the end, but we had gone the distance. This one looked to be flying away from Matt in similar fashion as Peter powered to 11-5 up, but grit is an important quality on a Squash court and this came to Matt’s aid as he won 6 of the next 7 points to level things up at 12-all. Well over an hour and we were in a best of five-point match! Sadly for Matt this all went against him sending him to an exhausting and deflating 21-19, 11-15, 18-16, 11-15, 12-15 loss.

The second string encounter pitted Gareth Jones against Oliver Johnson. Or rather Oliver was on the same court at the same time as Gareth played his usual greatest foe – himself. Bad Gareth was on show in the opening phases as he produced a string of early errors to fall 10-2 down. This was followed, as is customary, by the polar opposite string of thunderous winners as Gareth came roaring back to 11-12. Having worked his way back, actually by playing some more patient Squash to set the winners up, Gareth once again went for broke… and promptly lost the next three points! This obviously hurt as game two escaped in the blink of an eye, but game three was where it was at instead as Good Gareth came out firing at the start of it. A 10-3 lead ought to end up in a game win, and it did despite quite a few game points flitting away before the final winner was smacked on the forehand. Now the momentum was with Gareth, and he rode it to start the fourth with a 6-3 lead… and then, sadly, got comfortable and started trying to enjoy himself. Big mistake. Just three more points were claimed thereafter as he lost 11-15, 5-15, 15-12, 9-15.

A long evening of Squash meant that Jan Brynjolffssen (1) and Adam Brass only got on court well after 9pm. This seemed to throw Jan off as his crispness of shot was missing and his movement also seemed under its usual pace, with Adam taking advantage of both elements with a string of boast winners. The first two games rattled past rather quickly, but Jan finally settled in game three and began to bring out some of his better play to make it a much more competitive encounter. The lead swapped hands repeatedly until we got to 13-all, where Jan had a clear chance to put a backhand drop away to get to game ball… and tinned it! He saved the first match ball, promptly handed Adam another with a second snatched attempt at a clear chance, saved that one as well but ran out of time as Adam then put together two clean rallies from 15-all to close things out. Jan lost 8-15, 7-15, 15-17.