2000 Northern Tournament

Andrew Mitchell reports:

Late entries reached ridiculous proportions this year, with over half the eventual entries received less than three days before the tournament, making catering arrangements etc. somewhat tricky. Arrangements are reasonably flexible, but....

Eventually we had twenty pairs entered in the Championship and thirty-two in the Festival, probably a record entry.

The Championship

In the Championship pools, there were no real surprises as all the seeds won fairly comfortably. This left the semi-finals dominated by Old Olavians, with only Mark Lascelles and Jake Walters preventing a clean sweep. They competed well with the number one seeds, James Toop and Matthew Wiseman, and managed to take a game off them. In the other semi, Howard Wiseman and Seb Cooley comfortably defeated Pauli Markkanen and Karl Rudman 3-0.

With all the players in the final knowing each other so well, there were plenty of long rallies and a lot of excellent fives. A close and competitive match ended with Wiseman and Toop winning 3-1

The Festival

Meanwhile, in the Festival, there was as usual a wide variety of ages, abilities, shapes and sizes on show and most of these were represented in the knockout stages. Indeed the variety continued all the way to the final, where Simon Purkis and Chris Mellor, the KES Birmingham under-16 pair, defeated John Garnons-Williams and Philip Corn (who are slightly older!) 3-0.

Championship Plate

The Championship Plate was dominated numerically by Olavians, and not surprisingly the final was an all-Olavian affair with Chris Cooley and Martin Street defeating Peter Cohen and Paran Sarmah.

Festival Plate

The Festival Plates' entries were more varied and Plate "A" was won by the Cambridge University pair, Dallas and Chatterjee, and Plate "B" by Mckenzie and Coomaraswamy from Westminster School.

Results

Semi-finals

M Wiseman and J Toop beat M Lascelles and J Walters 3-1

H Wiseman and S Cooley beat P Markkanen and K Rudman 3-0

Final

M Wiseman and J Toop beat H Wiseman and S Cooley 3-1

Plate Final

C Cooley and M Street beat P Cohen and P Sarmah 2-0

Festival Final

S Purkis and C Mellor beat J Garnons-Williams and P Corm 3-0