Cippenham Super 6 Junior 2-Star Open (4.11.12)

Zickert pulls through

Bristol Academy player Christoph Zickert justified his top seeding by winning the Cippenham Super 6 Junior 2-Star Open tournament, however he did not have things all his own way all day. After winning all five of his matches in his preliminary round group, dropping only two games en route, he entered the knock-out stages at the top of the draw.

A bye took Zickert straight into the quarter-final where he faced Alex Meade. Meade took the first two games but Zickert fought back hard to equalise 2-2 and then took the match by the scruff of the neck to win the fifth and deciding game 11-3.  He was then faced with a familiar challenge because James Smith was his opponent in the semi-final. The two boys had met earlier in the day when Zickert’s victory by 3-1 saw Smith relegated to third spot in the group. The semi-final followed a similar pattern with Zickert once again winning 3-1 to set up a final encounter with Nishanth Narayanan. The first four games were shared two each, and each game was won 11-9 but Zickert broke the mould and took the title winning the fifth game 11-7.

Narayanan’s path to the final was somewhat different. He had to endure a tough competitive group in which three boys all won four matches each.  By virtue of his superior record against the other two tied players, Narayanan was awarded top spot, ahead of Carl Baldry, who he beat 3-0, and third seed Ryan Williams, to whom he lost 11-9 in the fifth but who had earlier lost to Baldry 3-0.

Once into the knock-out stages, Narayanann took full advantage of the absence of the second seed, beating Lucas Papantoniou 3-0 in the quarter-finals and then reversing his earlier defeat against last season’s champion Ryan Williams 3-1 in the semi-final.

Cippenham’s junior boy of the year Alex Gillen also made it into the competition proper, finishing second in his group, but lost 3-0 to Williams in the last sixteen.

The tournament was organised by Terry Boxall and refereed by Mick Strode to whom the Club offers its thanks for stepping into the breach for the unwell Steve Smith.

Results:

	Winner:	Runner-up:
Junior Singles	Christoph Zickert (Av)	Nishanth Narayanan (Bd)
Junior Consolation	Chris Clifford (He)	Simon Price (Ox)

by Graham Trimming