Melbourn Squash Club’s two Cambridgeshire League teams experience differing fortunes during latest round of matches

Melbourn Squash Club’s first suffered a heavy defeat to a St Ives 1 side who are in pursuit of the Cambridgeshire Division 1 title.

The visitors’ top two are both teenagers that have hopes of a professional careers in the sport and they proved too strong for Melbourn’s top two of Matt Sampson and Vinod Duraikan, Sampson losing 3-1 and Duraikan 3-0.

Below them Melbourn came up against more experienced players as Mike Herd (3) and Mark Oppen (5) were both well beaten 3-0.

Miles Jeanneret did collect points for the team, although he was edged out 3-2 in the match of the evening.

Meanwhile, Melbourn II regrouped after losing a big game the previous week to beat Comberton II 15-8 and climb back above their local rivals and back to third spot in the Cambs Division 3 table.

The match went to the wire, though there was little indication of the drama to come when Gareth Jones (5) and Jan Brynjolffssen (4) picked up straightforward 3-0 wins.

However, Comberton struck back with an equally comprehensive win as Ed Aspeling (3) struggled, and then drew level when Kate Bradshaw (1) was beaten 3-1 in a bad match-up of styles.

The last match left on court was Liam Murphy’s 2nd string encounter. This match see-sawed wildly, Murphy winning his opening game, then falling two games to one and 6-2 behind before recovering to comprehensive claim game four and force a decider.

Murphy had to recover from another big deficit in the final game as well, including saving three consecutive match balls and four in total as he eventually won it after a dramatic tie-break.