Melbourn won 17-4

The Melbourn First team latest match was against the unusually named Saints 2nds – St. Neots. It appears St. Neots and St. Ives have combined resources to be a single ‘Saints’… but the team in this league is mostly ex-St. Neots players, and is playing their home games there as opposed to… er, Hungtindon. Whatever. It’s confusing.
Anyway, this Saintly evening started unusually with the first string match as the opposition player, Jason Burgon, needed to play and dash. Although keen to make tracks, he probably wasn’t so pleased to get away in double quick time due to Matt Sampson putting in a very convincing performance, completely outplaying his opponent to take a 3-0, 15-11/15-8/15-6 win for Melbourn.
Ed Aspelling had a longer game to play, with his often vocal opponent (Andrew Montieth) producing some challenging play which took him to 16-14 in the second and a 1-1 scoreline. Ed managed to recompose himself and steadied the ship in the third with a 15-11 win, after which he proceeded to a more comfortable result in the fourth (15/7), taking the match 3-1.
Captain, Mark Oppen, was next up and in good form. Taking the first game 15-11, the match might have looked balanced, but he upped his game with good width and shrewd play to take the next two 15-7/15-6, cruising to a solid 3-0 victory over Sam Morris.
Kate Bradshaw had hoped that she’d take inspiration from the world’s best squash players, having watched some live matches at the Canary Wharf tournament the previous night, but in practice, it turned out to have the opposite effect. Bradshaw played below par for the entirety of the match albeit against a player, Harry Aldridge, who had some very decent spells of play, but who also was prone to unforced errors. The differing strengths of the players might have made for an excellently contended match on another night, but not this one. Bradshaw lost out 8-15/8-15/10-15.
Reliability returned to the courts in the form of the evergreen Vinod Duraiken. His was also an interesting match up, playing Grant Mankee, well known for his ability to keep running. However, Duraiken’s game-play knowledge and accuracy was too much even for the willing legs and lungs of his opponent, and he didn’t entertain the thought of a lengthy battle, winning out 3-0, 15-5/15-8/15-4.
Mark commented on the evening “It was another great result from the team against an experienced opposition. St Neots were missing their number 1 player on the night so we should prepare for the return match in the second half being more of a challenge.”