Charnwood A began their campaign in the Leicestershire Winter Indoor Mixed Doubles tennis league on Sunday 4 February against Leicester Forest East (LFE) A.

Matches in this competition are played using a medley format, with four players per team, two men and two women. 

One round of men's and ladies' doubles is followed by a round of mixed doubles, with the team winning the most rubbers being the victor. Each rubber is timed at around 40 minutes, with the contest ending on the expiry of the time.

For their first match, Charnwood A featured captain Kevin Leck, Chris Cottrell, Anna Randall and Caroline King. LFE's lineup comprised Johnny Parker-Leehane, Sue Yates, and husband and wife duo Amit and Hayley Mistri.

The men's doubles was extremely tight, with the big hitting of Parker-Leehane and Cottrell contrasting nicely with the craftier shots of Mistri and Leck.

At 4-4, Charnwood had a break point on the Parker-Leehane serve, but during the rally Leck made a sharp movement and injured his left knee, to such an extent that he could only hobble around for the rest of the match.

This gave Cottrell too much to do, and LFE emerged 7-4 winners.

Randall and King seal women's doubles victory

The ladies' doubles was also competitive, but the classy hitting of Randall, making a welcome return to this format after a few years away, allied to the determination of King, gave Charnwood a 7-5 victory.

With Leck struggling physically, Charnwood changed their planned pairings for the mixed doubles.

Cottrell would now play with Randall as the first pair, with Leck and King doing the best they could as second pair.  Both pairs were completely untried, but there was still everything to play for.

The first mixed match was a high-quality encounter featuring some spectacular rallies. Cottrell and Randall led 5-4, but Parker-Leehane and Hayley Mistri bounced back to take a 6-5 advantage, at which point the time ran out and gave LFE the win.

On the other court, King and a limping Leck were determined to get something out of their clash with Mistri and Yates.

Things did not look good when they fell 4-2 behind, but with King chasing everything and Leck using all of his anticipation to avoid excessive running they managed to turn things around, winning four hard-fought games in succession to lead 6-4. Despite Yates holding serve at the end, time ran out with Charnwood 6-5 ahead. 

Overall, an excellent match finished in a 2-2 draw, which, although the contest could easily have gone either way, was probably a fair result.