Captain’s vs Chairman’s Annual Challenge Cup

The fourth annual Captains vs Chairman's Challenge Cup took place in December. This is an event where the men’s and ladies’ Captains Julian Tanner and Emma Duncombe take on Dave Cross’ Chairman’s team. The game is open to all players who then go into the pool, a coin toss then decides who will have the first pick with the loser of the coin toss then getting to pick the next player to play the number one pick and then has the first pick for the second game and so on. The team that wins the most matches wins the overall trophy giving the chairman or the captain annual bragging rights.

After the three previous cups had been won by the Chairman’s select team the captains would try everything they could to stop the run and win the tournament for the first time

This year there were 62 players in 31 matches who played on court throughout the afternoon. The captains’ team got off to a fast start in the tournament with close 3-2 wins for Vinod Harjani and Nigel Steffenson. Tom Tang and Alyssa Ho also won in their matches to take the early lead for the captains’ team 5-1.

The chairman’s team then came back to close the gap with wins for Paul Simons, Alan Chew but chairman himself Dave Cross couldn’t quite manage to win his game as he lost to Andrew Wood 3-2. After the first 10 matches played the score was 6-4 to the captain’s team. In some very close encounters in the next set of matches Jason Brown managed to beat Jay Kramer 3-2 as did Chris Caves vs David Robinson. These games helped the captains’ team increase the lead to 13-6.

With 16 being the magic number of matches to win to gain the trophy the chairman’s team fought back with some great squash from the likes of Martin Mrosek, Mike Zimmermann and Phil Head who all won their matches. With some close games to come it was anyone’s to win the overall trophy. Carmen Lee for the Captains team beat Anson Wong in a close 3-2 encounter to get to the magic 16 which meant a win for the captains’ team in the 4^th time of playing.

The overall score was 18-13 to the Captains. The trophy was presented to captains Julian Tanner and Emma Duncombe by section sponsor Ian Burns from St James’s Place. Well done to all who took part in the matches. A few after squash beverages were enjoyed by the participants who could rue their missed opportunity of winning or bask in the glory of their win.

The chairman will be hoping this was a blip on his record and get back to winning ways next year.