BATTS Table Tennis Report: By Graham Frankel

THE Under 17 Two Star tournament at BATTS yesterday was another busy and full tournament. The entry this time was influenced by our unfortunate choice of date.

Many players who would have loved to participate gave priority, very sensibly, to their GCSEs starting this week.

But this opened the door to the cadets, who took full advantage of the opportunity. More than 70% of our total entry were cadets, and they included 6 out of the top 20 in the current England rankings. So it was rather pleasing to hear a some of the parents commenting that this was more like a Four Star tournament.

There is no doubt that these strong players inspired the remaining players, and the overall standard of play was outstanding. The top seeds also set a fine example to the others in sporting behaviour.
Before summarising the playing highlights, I would like to especially thank the parents who ensured that every player we were expecting arrived on time, such that we were even able to make a slightly early than scheduled start. I was only sorry that several other strong players on the reserve list could not be included.

Our overall winner was number 1 seed Aarav Parihar (Woodford Wells) who deserves huge credit his win. He had to overcome a string of tough opponents through the knockout and could so easily have faltered.

But he remained cool and controlled all the way. His opponent in the final was the 7th seed Noah Byrne-Smith (Ebatt). Noah, thankfully now recovered from injury, always performs well at our events and his path to the final included wins against 3rd seed Oscar Nikolli (Ebatt) in the SF and Arnav Sharma (Kingsway) in the QF. Arnav had delivered the main surprise in Band 1 by narrowly defeating 2nd seed Harrison Hill (Grantham).

Band 2 looked like being dominated by Rishi Patel (Stanmore) whose combination of bat of long and short pimples had effectively confused all his younger opponents. But when he reached the final, Dhruv Datta (Woodford Wells) made a remarkable recovery after losing the first two sets, demonstrating that dealing with pimples is not an impossible task.

Claude O’Reilly (Ellenborough) was the winner of Band 3, defeating the younger but much more experienced Suni Desai (Woodford Wells) in the final. Claude, who has only been playing seriously for a few months, had earlier signalled his potential when he narrowly missed a place in Band 2 having already beaten a much higher ranked player.

We were delighted to welcome Linda March to the organising team. We shall be seeing more of her in the months ahead. Thanks also to others who helped: Eamon Brennan who was our other qualified umpire, and also Neil, Derek, John, Carl and Clinton from BATTS. Sharon again provided brilliant refreshments all day.

We now look ahead to four more junior tournaments this year. Our next is an Under 15 Two Star on Sunday 15th June. It has been full for several weeks and currently has 13 on the reserve list. Then have an Under 13 Two Star in October which is already filling up fast. The next Under 17 is on Sunday 23rd November, and then an Under 15 on Monday 29th December. Forms for those final two will be published five months before the events.