1sts beat league favourites Leicestershire tennis - captain's report

Leicester Squash 1’Vs Leicestershire Tennis 26/10/2021

The Leicester Derby was upon us, an undefeated Leicestershire Tennis team travelled down the road to face off against Leicester Squash. Extremely confident they were until they saw the strawberry blonde headed youngster JJ Herbert coming in for his first match at number one (after bribery with numerous packets of Haribo). The moans and groans and “how much was he paid” jokes began.

First up was the captain Matt Ysart who went up against the unforgiving Ollie Wood. The first game was a close endeavour with Matt being game ball down but managing to clinch a 12-10 victory. Going 5-0 up in the second, the injury complaints from Ollie began and he was unable to keep up with a glute injury. Matt won the next two games comfortably 11-5, 11-3.

Next up was Neetesh vs Mark potter on court 5. Neetesh the underdog lost a closely contested first game 8-11. But, with the relentless tactic of bombarding Mark with drive after drive after drive, Neetesh managed to scrape through a great result winning the next 3 games 11-9, 11-9, 11-8.

Simultaneously the highly anticipated number 1s match up was occurring between JJ Herbert and Luke Parker, with a large crowd spectating. As expected, the quality was high and JJ went on the full attack to secure the first game 11-8, with a thrown racket and a fire in his belly Luke came back to win the second 11-2. JJ secured the next two very tight games 11-9, 12-10. To give the team a 3-0 lead and the team victory secured.

Next up were Matt Gregory and James Hodson, a first meeting for the pair. A high quality fast paced match full of controversial asks and umpiring decisions. Matt G held his own and was very much the initiator across the whole match. Losing the first game 9-11 after being 9-6 up, Matt came back fighting winning the next 11-6. The next 3 games were extremely close and could have gone either way, a tight 5 setter with Hodson scraping the victory. 9-11, 11-6, 9-11, 11-8, 9-11.

Last up was an old LSC hero Adam Bagley, transferring to Leicester Tennis for an undisclosed fee against Rob Britton. The mind games began early, with Rob delaying his arrival to frustrate Adam as he did his 4th warm up of the evening. The warmups proved effective as Adam won the first game 11-5. The yo -yo game saw both players having spells of dominance, going all the way to the 5th. With Rob going 2-1 up but Adam securing the 5th Game. 5-11, 11-7, 11-7, 4-11, 6-11.

Great Result against potentially the best team in the league, 3-2 win, but 18/20 points. A huge thanks to all that came to watch which undoubtedly helped us win through.

We look forward to seein you at our next home fixture!

Matt Ysart
1st Team Captain

30/10/2021