There was a flurry of matches in the final catch-up week in Division Four of the Leicester & District League, two of which featured Laszlo Kocsis, who plays for Nomads third team. They finished three off bottom so, therefore, are theoretically relegated, yet Kocsis had an excellent season in finishing on 71.9 per cent.
Against the club’s own fourth team, Kocsis won both in an 8-2 defeat when Nick Frear won three for the victors, while Roger Burley and Dave Weston supported with two. Kocsis then scored a brilliant maximum against Abbots Road III, this time in a 7-3 defeat. Five sets in two matches for his team and all won by Kocsis. For Abbots, two each from Dave Rana, Bhulesh Rathod and Trevor Drury.
Another having an excellent individual match was Wigston Conservative’s Ian Lockington, who gave his team a good enough foundation to claim a draw when he won all three against Regent Sports III, for whom Allan Clarke won two in the 5-5 result.
Talking about decent individual performances we find Ian Wetherley winning all three for Syston Casuals II against Newfoundpool in Division Two in their 5-5 draw. Steve Pratt and Chandresh Sodha both won two for Newfoundpool.
Then Wetherley played for his club’s first team in Division One and secured the only singles success when beating Abbots Road’s Omar Ahmed. For Abbots, both Dave Gannon and Ross Adams emerged undefeated in an 8-2 victory.
Unicorn duly won the Division One championship. Knighton Park beat Thringstone 8-2 with Chris Rogers defeating Maurice Newman along the way, leaving Unicorn needing to gain just three sets against the same opponents. It is something they did with ease with Jared Patel unbeaten to finish the season in that state, Mark Scutts also winning three in a 9-1 success.
The Leicester League’s Grading System is over 50 years old and still going strong being an ideal way of gathering information without any input from human hands in that it is decided entirely on how players perform against whatever level of opposition. The better the opponent the higher the potential reward and, of course, vice-versa. This enables the league and county to run a myriad of handicap and graded competitions throughout the year.
At the top are, naturally, those at the top of Division One. A the head of the list this season is Unicorn’s Jared Patel, undefeated in 42 singles, while Chris Rogers of Knighton Park is next having been beaten twice by Patel but losing only one other set.
The list has been calculated on what the level should be rather than what the official results will eventually be as the system’s core average has lowered over the years without being rectified. The official figures will be around 20 points less.
318 Jared Patel (Unicorn) average 100
312 Chris Rogers (Knighton Park) 95.4
306 Dave Gannon (Abbots Road) 90.4
300 Maurice Newman (Thringstone) 84.7
288 Aidan Walsh (Ajax Wolvey) 76.9
287 Karen Smith (Knighton Park) 75.4
285 John Fuller (Ajax Wolvey) 75.6
285 Andy LeButt (Electricity) 73.8
284 Reza Kiani (Knighton Park II) 73.1
282 David Grundy (Electricity) 71.0
John Bowness (publicity officer)
April 13, 2015