Both Cippenham teams made an encouraging start to the new Senior British Clubs League season at the weekend. Hosting the event at their home centre, and welcoming other teams from all around the south of England and south Wales, the weekend started in perfect fashion with all four matches won across the two teams. Sunday saw the second team carry on their unbeaten start to the season while the first team faltered slightly.

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Pride of place goes to the Cippenham second team, operating in National Division C-8 and trying to improve on their sixth-place finish last season. The weekend was a personal triumph for the two Prasanna Kumar brothers who won fifteen out of sixteen individual encounters between them. Twelve years-old Sai, fresh from his success at the England World Hopes Qualification tournament the previous weekend, in which he qualified as the sole England male representative for the World Hopes Week, won all eight of his matches. This was especially remarkable as he was promoted to number one on the team, from fourth last season, and therefore had the toughest opponents. His older brother, Bharath, won seven of his eight from the number four position while Hari Gehlot won six and Maciej Dlugozima three in an excellent all-round team display.

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Strangely, despite winning all of his matches, Sai was nominated as the player of the match only once, that being in the opening 7-2 win over Ashford 3. Instead, Hari received this accolade for the next two matches as Cippenham beat Newton Abbot 7-2 and Isle of Wight 8-1. The final match of the weekend was the most competitive as Cippenham recovered from 3-2 down to lead with a match-winning 5-3 before Bharath suffered his only defeat of the weekend in the dead rubber.

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Cippenham 2 finished the weekend in second position in the table, behind leaders Bristol Associates, who they have yet to play, on sets aggregate but with a gap of four points already opened up from the third-placed team Horsham.

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Having won promotion by winning Division B-2 last season, the Cippenham first team were expecting to have to battle for points in Division A-2. However, the Saturday matches went as well as could have been hoped. Two 5-4 victories were recorded against Urban 2 and Horsham Spinners.

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The first match followed an unusual pattern with Cippenham storming into a 5-0 lead with wins for Shae Thakker, Rob Hansell, Martin Adams and Martin Gray and a doubles success for Shae and Rob. After that it followed a different path with Cippenham players losing all four reverse encounters, there of which were decided very closely in the fifth and deciding game. With all eight players in the match winning once and losing once, the computer allocated the player of the match to Shae who had recorded a 3-0 win over Costas Papantoniou but lost 11-9 in the fifth to Costas’ son Lucas.

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Martin Adams won twice to deservedly be named player of the match in the second match, a 5-4 win over Horsham Spinners. Shae also won twice while Rob ensured the points for Cippenham when he made the score 5-3 by beating Aedan McGivern.

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Sunday’s matches showed that Cippenham will have to work hard to avoid relegation from this division. With Andy Norwood replacing Martin Gray, Cippenham lost the morning match 7-2 against eBaTT 2 despite having led 2-1 at an early stage. The afternoon proved what a strong division this is going to be when Cippenham were thumped 9-0 by a strong Woodford Wells team and finished the weekend in sixth place, albeit equal on points with the third-placed team.