In our Under-15 2* Tournament yesterday we had a major diversion from our normal format. After receiving a strong entry of seven girls, we decided to hold a separate girls’ event for the first time.

This involved careful preparation and planning, and I am hugely grateful to Linda Radford for her sensible suggestions and solid support. Our solution was to have a larger than normal group for the girls who played each other during the morning and this was followed by semi-finals and a final for the girls finishing in top four.

Meanwhile, we limited the boys’ entry to 42 who played, as usual in groups of six followed by three knockout bands.

As the morning progressed, it became clear that our planning had worked, and we were on track to finish the tournament at the usual time, but with four simultaneous finals instead of the normal three.

All the players we were expecting had arrived promptly and we are very grateful to the parents for achieving this, with many of them travelling a considerable distance.

We had an exceptionally strong entry this time. As well as having five of the seven girls ranked in the top 32, we had five boys in the top 20 and eight in the top 50 cadets in England. But as usual we also a good spread of other competitors, including several who had much less experience of tournament play.

We fully expected that the girls’ event would be tightly fought. The second and fifth seeded players were separated by only 16 ranking points. Our expectations were completely met. Spectacular play and close finishes were the order of the day.

In the end, the top four seeded girls made it to the semi-finals, but the fifth seed Adhuna Das (Britannia) was desperately unlucky not to make the cut. Not only did she defeat the fourth seed Shreya Popat (South Croydon) in the group, Adhuna also had very close matches with all the other top seeds, in the end losing out only after countbacks.

Shreya took inspiration from her shaky start against Adhuna, steadily gaining in confidence as the competition progressed. In the semi-final, Shreya beat Gaia Wong (Ellenborough) 3-2 (8-11, 12-10, 9-11, 11-2, 14-12) and then, in the final she overcame Grace Liu 3-2 (11-8, 12-14, 3-11, 11-8, 11-9). Shreya looked remarkably calm after having played 31 games during the day and was a worthy winner.

In the other semi-final Grace had narrowly beaten the top seed Bethany Yang (Ellenborough) 3-1 (11-6, 11-6, 9-11, 12-10). We were very happy to have run the separate girls’ event as well as deciding to increase the prize fund to match the girls’ prizes with those of our usual Band 1.

The boys’ tournament ran close to expectation with top seed Oscar Nikolli (eBaTT) beating the second seed Sinan Surensoy (Woodford Wells) 3-0 (12-10, 11-9, 11-5) in the final of Band 1.

Our Band 2 winner was Ishaan Sethi (Woodford Wells) who beat Vihaan Thakur (Kingfisher) 3-0 (11-8, 11-7, 11-8). The Band 3 winner was James Katz (Urban) who defeated Harry Speller (Thanet Vikings) 3-0 (11-6, 11-4, 11-4).

One of the most gratifying features of these tournaments is to see the emergence of players who are new to competitions. Yesterday we saw Dilan Patel (Ellenborough) reach the semi-final of Band 3 in his first open tournament, notching up his first national ranking points. Among other notable achievements we congratulate the following who beat higher seeded players in their groups. As a result of this, Milan Saujani (Hillingdon) and Louis Aguirré (Ellenborough) reached Band 1. Also, Onela Sapumanage (KG), Daniel Delgado (Kingfisher) and Flynn Kemp (Maidstone) made it into Band 2.

We are very grateful to others who helped us with the smooth running of this tournament: our super team of officials: Linda Radford, Amanda Alabaster, Derek Balding, Sarah March, Mary Nicholls, Debbie O’Neill, and Lin Roff. Plus, as always, great support from the BATTS stalwarts Neil Brierley and Sharon Head.

We now look forward to our next junior events at BATTS. The Under-13 2* on Sunday 15 February is full but if you apply soon, you could get a high place on the reserve list. Then on Sunday 3 May we have entries arriving steadily for Under-15 2*.

On Sunday 5 July we will hold our first Girls-Only tournament (entry forms will be published in February). Unfortunately, our plan for an Under-17 in March was thwarted but we shall be looking for new dates after the summer.

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