Experience shows as Oxford trounce Tabs
Croquet Varsity
Oxford............................8
Cambridge.....................1
The annual Varsity Croquet Match took place this summer in London at the Hurlington Club in the shadow of the venue’s Marsh Classic professional tennis tournament. Although light rain ensured that the lawns were on the slow side of easypaced, the club offered better conditions than anything available in Oxford or Cambridge. Oxford were strong favourites to win the match for the third year running, with most of last year’s team returning back to the fray.
In contrast, Cambridge fielded a team with very little experience of competitive Association Croquet. It was no surprise therefore to see four of the singles matches settled by large margins in Oxford’s favour, with the number two match seeing Mark Snow establish an unassailable lead that was wasted as time was called before he had a chance to close out a finish.
Jonathan Kirby led the assault with a tremendous win over Cambridge’s talismanic captain Asif Arshad, who was clearly out of sorts as Kirby stormed to a 20-point victory. Andrew Cottrell then fired the day’s biggest result with an emphatic 26 to 1 annihilation of an unlucky Richard Gibson.
Chris Hansen and Roger Coates almost matched Gibson’s remarkable feat before Sam Mooring saw his best attempts to create a late push in the last match to claw back in front fail as he eventually lost by seven to a fantastic performance by Hugo Bush. Nonetheless, the morning singles session proved to be a one-sided affair as Oxford established a 5 to 1 lead over the Tabs.
With the match seeming all but won at lunchtime, the teams made five substitutions between them for the afternoon doubles to allow more players a chance to earn some valuable match experience. Nothing Cambridge could do affected the pattern of the day as Oxford raced to victories in all three matches. The afternoon started with Snow and Coates posting another big winning margin against Arshad and Alan Mak, the tie finishing 26 to 3.
Not to be outdone, Mooring got revenge for his earlier defeat alongside Anton Evseev as they beat new partnership Will Seymour and James Ellis by twenty points of the possible 26. Even the least successful pairing of Cottrell and Michael Solomon registered a ten point win to cap off a thoroughly successful day for the Oxford team.
Cambridge can take some of positives out of their performance as they made comparatively light work of the vast experience gap between the teams, but it was another convincing win for the dark blues who will now set their sights to 2006. The Tabs will certainly need to do something dramatic to prepare themselves better for next year’s croquet crown event of the season.
5th Oct 2005