Double for Breindel while Shae is the local star

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Hertfordshire’s Carl Breindel was the star of the Sunday events at the Cippenham Young Players’ Summer Festival, winning both the Under-16 and Under-18 titles. However, putting the two days together, the shining light was Cippenham’s own Shae Thakker, winner of the Under-14 Boys’ Singles on Saturday and runner-up to Breindel in the Under-18 event on Sunday.

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The two-day Table Tennis England 1-star rated tournament began with the Under-12 Singles on Saturday morning. The local interest was with Pranav Gudipati, another of Ken Phillips’ youngsters who has started to make a big impression at Cippenham this season.

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The second seed won his preliminary round group and then stepped through the gears in the knock-out rounds. Pranav recovered from 2-1 down to beat Marco Plate 3-2 in his semi-final and that set up a meeting with Kamran Bastani in the final. In the end, the Cippenham youngster was beaten in the final by the boy from Cambridgeshire. Bastani was in superb form throughout. The fourth seed dropped only a single game while dominating his initial group and then stormed through the top half of the draw with the only other player to take a game being top seed Harry Derecki in the semi-final.

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Cippenham’s William Fricker also had a good event, winning his group and progressing another round before being eliminated by Derecki in the quarter-final.

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Saturday afternoon saw the turn of the Under-14’s, split into boys’ and girl’s events. Shae Thakker dominated the boys’ event, winning the title with the dropping of only one game, that in the semi-final against David Avery who had travelled, with a team of other players, all the way from Wales. Shae’s opponent in the final was Louis Rogove, the second seed, but Shae was at the top of his powers by that time and ran out an easy winner 11-6, 11-6, 11-6.

In the semi-final Rogove put an end to the run of Arjun Arora. Arora had suffered defeat in his preliminary group but qualified in second place but then went on to defeat third seed Marcus Holba in the quarter-final. The player who beat Arora in that group was William Fricker. William won all his matches at that stage and was only eliminated in the quarter-final when he came up against his Cippenham team mate Shae.

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The Under-14 Girls’ Singles was played as a round-rob and won by Anaya Patel with Millie Rogove runner-up.

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There was a smaller entry for the older age groups on the Sunday and both were dominated by Carl Breindel. Breindel’s final opponent in the under-16 event was Marcus Holba who had unexpectedly defeated Shae in the semi-final. The other semi-finalist was Kyle Day.

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In the under-18 event it was Shae who provided the final opposition to Breindel but even he could not prevent the Hertfordshire player from taking a well deserved double. The semi-finalists were Benjy Zentner and Jamie-Lee Harley.

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The tournament was refereed by Sue Hayes who was helped by her daughter Rebecca to whom the Cippenham club is indebted for stepping into the breach in place of her indisposed sister Catherine. Quite a family affair!