The third round of North London Region National Junior League matches was held at Ellenborough on Saturday 16 January 2016.

After the first two rounds of matches, when the teams in each Division had played one another once, the leaders of Division 2, Graham Spicer, who had won all their matches by massive margins, were promoted and the bottom team in Division 2, Ellenborough B, were relegated. The Chelmsford team had led the Division 1 at that stage.

The A Team’s first match was against Mossford 1, a Team they had beaten 6-3 first time around. In the opening matches Ryan Gooday (Essex No. 3 Junior) lost to the rapidly improving Essex No. 4 Cadet Jaden Aulakh 9, 9, -12, 6 whilst Daniel Berry (No. 6 Junior) demolished Essex No 12 Numayr Malik 3, 6, 6. With Tanishq Kotwal losing to Abbas Essop (Ex.18) 3-1 and then Jaden narrowly -5, 9, 9, 9 and with Ryan losing to Numayr easily 3-0 Chelmsford were 4-1 down. Daniel led the fight back with a 3-1 win over Abbas and with nail biting wins for Tanishq over Numayr 9, -4, 9, 9 and a painful to watch 3-2 win for Ryan over Abbas, Daniel completed the coup de grace over Jaden 3-0 for the team 5-4 win.

Their opposition for the second match were the promoted Graham Spicer team and it showed just how good they were. In his opening match Ryan went to a deciding game with David Suk after failing to win a match point in the fourth game and lost the fifth 11-9. He went on to lose his other two matches with Damien Gray and Asa Gauntlett easily, both 3-0. Tanishq lost his three matches all 3-0 and it was the hard working Daniel who carried the team by hard fought wins, all 3-1, over his three opponents.

On paper they now had two easier matches to come, the two bottom teams in the table. Ryan won all three of his matches against Bruce Yao, George Whitley and Sam Kester as did Daniel although he let a 2-0 lead over Sam slip before winning the decider 11-9. Tanishq won his deciding game with Sam, having to come back from 2-1 down, lost the decider with Bruce and beat George easily 3-0. Thus an 8-1 win.

Their last match was against a second from bottom two player Fusion 2 Hugo Dodd and Sergio Garcia. Ryan lost his opening match to Hugo 3-1 and Tanishq his against Sergio also 3-1. With Daniel two easy 3-0 wins and unbeaten during the day a 7-2 win was achieved.

Daniel 11 out of 11, Ryan 5 out of 11 and Tanishq 4 out of 11.

For the B Team it was a frustrating day and probably just as well that Tejas was unable to play leaving Harrison Matthews, Harry Rodgers and Adam Chalk to fly the B Team flag.

Their first match should have been against a two player Ellenborough C team but neither player turned up to play so a 9-0 win.

Their second match was against the relegated Ellenborough B team who had an opening bye. In the event only one player, a first division standard Ray Yan turned up to play and he won his three matches easily.

For the third round of matches they had a bye so it was pleasing to get a match against a full team even if it was a BATTS B Team that they had lost 6-3 to on the first day when Tejas had won two and Harry one. This time Harrison won two, a -8, 8, -4, 7, 12 win over Toby Moring and a last match 6, 7, 0 win over Samadhi Udamulla. Harry was closest to another win, losing two of his matches in the deciding game whilst Adam took two of his matches to a fourth game.

The final round will be three matches on Saturday 27 February.

DIVISION 1 TABLE                           

Arthur C. Clark - Chelmsford Junior Match Secretary