The new season got under way at Cippenham on Saturday with the Cippenham Five by Two Senior and Veterans 1* tournament.
This was the 13th running of this particular event and attracted a good entry of 55 players who could choose between participating in both the senior and veterans’ events or just one. Separate events were run for women who, because of the lack of numbers in those events, were also invited to additionally play in the all-comers’ events alongside the men.
The morning session started out with the veterans’ events. The women’s section was played as a round-robin of four players and this was won emphatically by Bhanureka Sabaratnam, a former Cippenham player, who had travelled from south Wales for the occasion. The runner-up was Christine Williams.
The all-comers’ event provided sterner competition with the players originally drawn into eight groups. The top ranked player in each of the groups all made it through in first place without too many alarms and all but one of those progressed safely through to their allotted spots in the quarter-finals.
The exception was Vadym Krevs who lost out one round earlier to Mark Banks, a late entrant after having decided to enter just one day earlier and having not played for five years. Banks’ progress did not stop there as he then defeated fourth seed Kevin Caldon in the quarter-final.
The other three quarter-finals all featured players from the host club as Hari Gehlot and Rob Hansell eliminated Rory Scott and Daniel Heo respectively, but Steve Joel fell to top seed Paul Carter.
Banks’ run eventually cane to a halt when he lost to Carter in the semi-final, despite winning the first game, while Hansell emerged successfully from his encounter with Gehlot.
The overall winner was Cippenham star Hansell as the second seed successfully defended the crown he won in January 2025 by beating Paul Carter 3-0 (13-11, 11-3, 11-5).
The afternoon Women’s Singles event was, like the veterans’ event in the morning, contested by four players, three of these being the same players. Bhanu Sabaratnam once again emerged victorious without dropping a game with the runner-up being Cippenham’s Chloe Ireland.
As in the earlier veterans’ event, the players lined up in eight groups for the Mixed Singles. The group winners were Sammy Kaye, Hasitha Udara, Kiarash Shaddel, Joe Britnell, Quentin Kwan, Vadym Krevs, Sanjiv Malhotra and Steve Joel. Seven of these made it through to the quarter-finals, the exceptions being Malhotra, who was beaten by Chandupa Alahakoon, and Steve Joel, who lost out to Krevs. They were joined by Hari Gehlot who won a battle between two group runners-up.
Once into the quarters, Udara bean Kwan 3-2 in a close match decided only at deuce in the fifth game, Britnell and Shaddel won their matches 3-1 against Krevs and Alahakoon respectively while top seed Kaye dropped only 15 points in making light work of Gehlot.
Kaye was now in full flow and won the title by beating Shaddel 3-0 (11- 7, 11-7, 11-4) in the semi-final and Udara 3-0 (11-7, 11-8, 11-4), in the final leaving Richard West, in the preliminary group, as the only player to take games off Kaye in the entire day. The tournament was organised by Paul Baker and refereed by Sue Hayes.
