Electricity III in Division Two of the Leicester and District League look a useful team in depth this season with Harry White joining his father Steve, inevitable known as Chalkie, who is still a force to be reckoned with having won the County Singles title a number of years ago. Also joining them for a squad of four are two youngsters Richard Martin and Adam Pettitt.
Harry White won an excellent maximum while dad and Martin both backed well with a couple apiece against Abbots Road II, who have signed a young player themselves in Jinious Sheth, who beat Martin, while Geoff Hancock was the one to beat Chalkie as Electricity won 8-2.
Sheth’s sister, Kinar, has joined Knighton Park and appears in the same division as her brother for KP’s fourth team, picking up a very useful success against Regent Sports when she beat Charlie Bateman in a 5-5 draw. Star of the show was KP’s Jack Rogers, who took a maximum against some very experience players in Bateman, Martin Bolton and Kevin Sanderson. Also appearing for KP was Rayan Kotecha, who had no luck this time.
One of the significant points about these two matches is that five of the players are juniors playing at a decently high standard with other juniors coming through at lower levels.
Knighton Park III just held on to their Division Two status last season and have started this campaign very well against the two teams who gained promotion from Three.
With their third team member, Mike Lapworth, battling for his life in hospital having contracting sepsis whilst holidaying abroad, Patrick Carton and Peter Wilson flew the flag in fine style, just the two of them beating Unicorn II 6-4 when Carton won three, Wilson two and then the doubles for a 6-4 victory.
Their next match was against Arnesby II and this time it was a fine maximum by Wilson spearheading a 7-3 success. Carton won one and they had a bit of help from John Bowness who took two. Dave Wagstaffe won two for Arnesby, Dave Small one. Lapworth is improving but has quite a wait ahead before picking up a table tennis bat again.
Nomads came down to Division Three from Two last season and are obviously very keen to get back to where they feel they belong and their first match saw them thrash Regent Sports II, not only 10-0 but all 10 sets needing only three games.
Andy Searle, Zaheer Mohamed and Martin Taylor, the latter having moved from Great Glen, were in complete control. Regent, on the other hand, have lost two experienced players in Tim Cawston and Stu Jones, neither of whom are playing in the league this season. The Dewsbury brothers, John and David, were joined by Allan Clarke and will find plenty of winning opportunities ahead.
For many years Division Three has been dominated by one player, Leicester Taxes’ Bruce Johnson, who has won the individual competition numerous times, including last season.
This term his team faced Knighton Park VII, when Johnson lost to both Chris Parmar-Saville and Patrick Cox and only just scraped past Eddie Kwok at 12-10 in the fifth. Phil Hodgson won two for Taxes but KP got home 7-3.
Johnson then lost another when beaten by Abbots Road third team’s Chetan Tailor, backed by two from Jimmy Rana and one by Bhulesh Rathod as Taxes lost 6-4 despite Johnson winning his other two. Tailor had previous also emerged undefeated when his team beat Electricity IV 6-4 including victories over Sheriff Makhani and Chris Woodward, who both won their other two.
Two very good performances in Division Four included a brilliant maximum from youngster Jack Kermode, for Winstanley Wizards against Electricity V in a 5-5 draw. Meanwhile, Raju Rahul was also winning three for Abbots Road IV against Wigston Conservatives in a 7-3 victory.