16/02/2005
Manchester/Pontefract 4 Wolberhampton 1 Anthony Ricketts beat James Willstrop 3-0, 9/4, 10/8, 9/7.
With neither of the top two ladies available Wendy stepped in for her first game of the season. She no longer plays on the tournament circuit and is a full time coach at Tewkesbury so is short of top level match practice. She took the first two games to get used to the pace but put up a fight in the third before going down 9-5 after 23 minutes to a very talented world number 11.
Chris came in at short notice to replace Alex Gough who had a foot injury. Chris himself had been off the squash court for two weeks due to a combination of injury and illness and is also studying hard in the last 4 months of his University degree. After much discussion the game plan was to go flat out for the first in the hope of picking up a point for the team and then see what happened after that. It nearly worked but Andy proved just a bit too fit and too fast and although prone to making a fair few errors he was able to deny Chris his game. Lack of match preactice and illness proved fatal after that and Chris went down 3-0.
Mark always gives everything and he and Nick played out the only really close game of the evening. It could have gone either way with both men battling back from losing positions. Mark and Nick have played against each other many times and know each others game. This sort of leads to a fair number of lets, in fact 30 in all during the match as well as 9 penalty strokes. And most importantly 4 no-lets. At one all and 8 all we had one of the defining points in the game when Nick played an outrageous winner that just stayed above the tin to take him to game point. Fractions of an inch can change a match and that one did as had he missed Mark would have been poised to take a 2-1 lead. The fourth was close with Mark building a good lead, getting pegged back then taking the game on a penalty point. The second defining point came at 8 all in the last game when Mark was refused a let attempting to get to a back hand drop shot. The referee must call it as he sees it but he had seen others somewhat differently. Anyway match point and Nick needed no further incentive and closed out the match.
In our home match Scott had overwhelmed Marcus in short order. This time it was different. The first game was very close with neither man really dominating though Scott was first to game ball. Marcus then had game ball but failed to capitalise and Scott closed off the game. Although one up Scott didn't really seem in charge and every now and then went for some form of deception shot that generally didn't work. Marcus just stuck in and waited for the errors to come which they duly did in the second. A few disputed points in the third and the match was effectively over. Scott led briefly in the fourth but never seemed happy with his game and from 4-3 up lost the next 6 points.
At the beginning of the evening I had hoped that we could come away with 7 or 8 points at least to maintain our challenge for a semi final place. At this stage we had only 3 points with one game to play. Not good.
Anthony Ricketts against James Willstrop. Two weeks ago Anthony told me that he was unhappy with his game and felt that he was not playing well. Tonight that changed. Being one of the fittest men around Anthony often goes off at a million miles an hour powering balls all over the court but sometimes losing sight of the objective. Tonight was different with a good many changes of pace, a variety of drops, boasts and cross court shots all of which induced errors from James. To a certain extent the effort of reaching the National Final on Sunday had taken its toll on James but equally Anthony had had a hard game on the previous night in Cardiff. Although the second and third games were close in terms of the score line there was only ever going to be one winner and after only 25 minutes we and Anthony had secured 3 more vital points.
So with the result from the other Northern Division match producing a win for Nottingham we find ourselves 22 points clear of Nottingham and 25 above Duffield though both teams have a game in hand. We have a bit of a break now with our last match at home against Nottingham on the 22nd March.
That will almost certainly be the decider for the second place in the Northern Division. Should be a good night ...
THE FIGHT FOR SECOND PLACE HOTS UP
Stephen Russell sees Wolverhampton salvage some points at Pontefract ...
Playing Manchester/Pontefract is always a difficult task and with a slightly understrength team that task was made no easier. Results on the night were:
Scott Handley lost to Marcus Berrett 3-1, 11/9, 2/9, 2/9, 4/9.
Mark Cairns lost to Nick Taylor 3-2, 10/8, 2/9, 8/10, 9/7, 8/10.
Chris Ryder lost to Andrew Whipp 3-0, 10/12, 4/9, 3/9.
Wendy Maitland lost to Laura Duncalf 3-0, 1/9, 1/9, 5/9.
Contributor: Stephen Russell
Club: Wolverhampton
Link: http://www.wltsc.com
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