LEICESTERSHIRE TABLE TENNIS ASSOCIATION
LEICESTER LEAGUE
Division Three of the Leicester League was always a two-team race and it was Leicester Electricity 3rds who finally just shaded top position by one point ahead of Nomads’ first team with the third place team of Abbots Road 3rds a massive 21 points further back.
The Spark’s had an ever-present trio in Tomas Oravec, who topped the individual averages, Chris Woodward and Shokat “Sheriff” Makhani, while Nomads almost did the same, all but three or four matches with Zaheer Mohamed, Cliff Smith and Andy Searle. High in the averages for Abbots Road was Fahed Sacoor whose experience includes playing table tennis for Mozambique in the Olympics Games.
At the bottom the two teams relegated are Great Glen 2nds, but their first team will stay, and Syston Casuals 3rds. Electricity’s fourth team were next higher but will almost certainly escape the drop as there are one or two holes to fill next season which almost certainly spells three up and two down.
Nomads as a club are on the upwards move as their second team won Division Four and will take the place of the first team squad in Three next term. Nomads had the ever improving Steve Andrews at the top of the individual averages with 93%.
Fellow promoted will be Regent Sports who won a spirited battle for the runners-up spot with Stu Jones in good form spear heading the team. They pipped Blaby and Whetstone 2nds who will almost certainly get a lift up a division. At the other end of the scale it will be Wigston Conservatives down together with Goons 2nds who had a terrific tussle with four other teams before just missing out on enough points to stay up.
Individually a young lady moving up the ranks for Abbots Road fourth team is Shreya Mehta who finished with 67% while Patrick Cox, one of the Special Olympic Elite squad, had a good season captaining Knighton Park eighth team with an excellent 75%.
Having topped Division One the Unicorn club also did well in Division Five in winning by a mile, an impressive 18 points ahead of Leicestershire Police having only drawn one and won the rest. Inevitably they had players at the head of the individual averages with John Genovese on 98% having lost just one, while David Green had 92%.
Regent Sports 4ths finished third, just behind the Police, despite beating the Bobbies 6-4 but the crunch match was then the Police beating Regent Sports 3rd team 7-3 to secure second place.
Luke Blair did particularly well for Desford Village 3rds with a creditable 81% when you consider his team finish seventh in the table.
Division Six might be the bottom division, and only a half one at that with six teams but, as divisional secretary for that section, I found it a joy to look after with five of the teams housing one hundred per cent new players to the league.
As such it is not always easy to assess how they stand but Regent Sports 5ths had players already graded which helped. Knighton Park eleventh team romped home with each team playing the others four times. They had one 7-3 result but the rest were 8-2 or better with many of them 10-0. Four juniors: Ben Stone, the only regular player in the league finishing 100%, Ben Smulzsynski, Richard Martin and Jack Rogers as well as Kenny Obilaso. Second by a fair margin were Leicester Electricity 6ths.
John Bowness
Publicity Officer. (April 28, 2014)