Match report: National League v Thistleworth

On Sunday 19 May, we played Thistleworth in our first home match of the season in the National League. The singles matches were very close, 3 of them going to tiebreak deciders:

Tristan lost his tiebreak against Anoop 6-10

Callum won his against Raj 10-6

Nat lost his (after a long battle) against Nathan 5-10.

Meanwhile, Ed only got 2 games out of Kevin, 2-6, 0-6.

So we went into the doubles already 2-6 down and needing to win both doubles rubbers to take it to a shootout.

Unfortunately, Ed and Tristan, after starting quite positively, lost 3-6, 1-6 to Kevin and Raj.

Nat and Callum lost their first set against Nathan and Anoop 2-6, before having to retire.

So the final score was Chiswick 2- Thistleworth 10.

The singles performances were excellent. Nat probably deserves a Man of the Match award for taking his excellent opponent Nathan to a tiebreak, but I’m going to say Callum because he won his match and Raj is a very good player too. Well done everyone, we were close- but not close enough.

The team stayed for home-made smoked haddock & broccoli quiche before heading home.

Match report: Middlesex League v Gunnersbury Triangle

The key event in this match happened just before we started playing. After a huge effort to get a team together (some players away, others injured, others working, etc etc), when the team eventually assembled on Thursday evening, Ed, just as he was congratulating himself on finding 6 team players, discovered that Abraham was ineligible due to having already played for Hurlingham club this season. So we decided that he and Christian would play as a non-counting third pair and we’d have to concede all that pair’s sets 0-6.

After that, the team was understandably in a bit of a daze in the first round, and indeed we lost all our sets:

Roman and Tristan lost 2-6 to opposition first pair Lee and Robert.

Ed and Barnaby lost 2-6 to opposition third pair Mikael and Aadil.

And Abraham and Christian lost 4-6 to opposition second pair Graham and Richie.

By the second round, we’d recovered:

Barnaby & Ed beat Graham & Richie 6-3.

Roman & Tristan beat Mikael & Aadil 7-5.

And Abraham & Christian beat opposition first pair Lee & Robert 6-1 (albeit 0-6 on paper).

In the final round, Barnaby & Ed managed to win their sets against Lee and Robert 6-1, 6-3.

Abraham and Christian were all square against Mikael and Aadil 2-6, 6-4 (officially 0-6, 0-6)

Meanwhile, Roman and Tristan were in a good, tight, close match against Graham & Richie, when youngster Richie ruined the mood with an accusation of cheating, which led the Chiswick players to quit on the spot, and the score went down as 5-7, 0-6.

The final score would have been a tie 12-12 if all our sets had counted, potentially more if Roman and Tristan got something out of their last set, but unfortunately it went down as a 8-16 loss, the second time a “tie” has gone down as a loss this season, after Ed misread the rules in our first match of the season against the Harrow Baptists, *sigh*.

We headed to the clubhouse for a pleasant supper of beef and vegetables stew, but it was already late. 

Apart from the unpleasant incident of Richie’s outburst, and of course the disappointing result, the actual performance was our best so far this season and if we can carry that forward into our upcoming matches, we can do well this season. Well played everyone, and special mention for Man of the Match is Barnaby, whose serving in particular was excellent.