The first round of North London Region National Cadet League matches for 2018/19 was held at Ellenborough TTC, Enfield on Sunday 4 November 2018. Sixteen teams from six Clubs (fourteen teams last year) had entered. With a new Organiser it was decided to have four Divisions of four teams, the same as this season’s Junior format. Chelmsford entered two teams this season which were put in Divisions 2 and 3 after two or three seasons with no entries. The usual format of the Divisions was matches of nine games so that the players of each team played one another in their Division matches. Each Divisional pair of matches shared three tables.

With Sudheep Kamma pulling out three days beforehand and me not yet having contact details of many of the Leagues cadets and Harry Buckle’s month’s period of no sports following his injury was over.  He was pleased to be invited to play since he was not yet allowed to play Sunday football.

Thus the A Team comprised of the Danbury players Ben Porter, Ewan Hynd and Sam Mortimer- Ford whilst the B Team was the Chelmsford Club’s James Donald, Joachin Mapes and Harry Buckle.

The A Team’s introduction to National League table tennis was a match against Essex Club Mossford 2 with a thumping 9-0 win, only two games going past deuce and one of these in the last match which went to a fourth game. The Mossford players were Jeevan Pothiraj, Aryan Sharma and Shivan Subudhi.

Their next match was against Graham Spicer B and although they won this match 9-0 as well it was a much tougher match for them. Neil Peabho was Graham Spicer’s best player and he took both Sam and Ben to deciding games, Sam 10, -9, -10, 10, 3 and Ben 15-17, 6-11, 11-5, 16-14, 11-5. Ewan beat him in four games. They all beat Cassius Collett 3-0 and Ben was the only player to be taken to a fourth game by Oliver Cheung.

The final match of the day was against Fusion 1 with the Chelmsford team leading their opponents by one point. However, this was their toughest match of the day by far. Ben won the first two games against Freddy Wilke 13 and 10 but lost the next three 9, 9, 2, nothing going right for Ben in that final game. Freddy went on to beat Ewan and Sam 3-0 and Yiannis Kazantsidis beat all three boys three straight. It was with some relief that they all beat Jonayed Ahmed.

All three players wom 7 out of 9 matches.

DIVISION 2 TABLE

                                               P          W         L          Pts

Fusion 1                               3          3          0          23

Chelmsford A                      3          2          1          21

Graham Spicer B                3           1          2           7

Mossford                              3          0          3           3

For the B team the opening match against Woodford Wells was the hardest of the day. James won his opening match against Oliver Masson -9, 8, 6, 10 and he was taken all the way by Carl Partridge, finally winning 9, 5, -12, -12, 5 and in the last match lost to Alfie Osborne 3-1. Joachin lost all his matches 3-0 whilst Harry lost 3-1 to Carl after the first three games were very close. He went on to beat Alfie 12-10 in the fourth game but never really in the match with Oliver, losing three nil.

The team then played Fusion 2 who only had two players, Anton Salisbury-Jones and Felix Jones. The first two matches were close. James beat Anton 4, 10, -6, 10 and later on accounted for Felix easily 3-0. For Joachin he was taken to a fifth gams by Felix before finally winning -5, 12, 6, -10, 7 but lost the very last match to Anton 3-1. Harry won both his matches 3-0 but it was 17-15 in the third game against Anton.

Their last match was against Ellenborough B and James and Harry won all their matches 3-0. For Joachin he lost his first match against Max Gonpot 3-1 after winning the first game and then beat Megan Ravetto 3-0 and finally Yadata Dechasa 11-7 in the fifth game after having won the first two games both 12-10 to give the team an 8-1 win.   

DIVISION 3 TABLE                           

TABLES FOR THE TWO OTHER DIVISIONS ARE:

DIVISION 1 TABLE

Woodford Wells 1                  3          3          0          22

Graham Spicer A                    3          2          1          14

Mossford 1                              3          1          2          11

Ellenborough A                       3          0          3           7

DIVISION 4 TABLE

Woodford Wells 3                3          3          0          23

Graham Spicer Girls            3          2          1          22

Mossford 3                            3          1          2            7

Fusion 3                                 3          0          3           2                   

A good performance by all the players.It is difficult to know whether there will be promotion and relegation between any of the Divisions.

The next round will be three matches on Sunday 2 December and finishing time is likely to be about 3.30pm.