Cornwall’s under 21 badminton stars were out in force at the weekend in a triangle match against Avon and Devon. The fixture held at St Peters School, Exeter is the third year the event has taken place and is good preparation for the Inter Counties Competition (ICC) held in April at Hatfield. The ICC is the pinnacle of colt badminton with over 30 counties competing. When the Duchy had arrived Devon had already beaten Avon 6-4 so it was now the Cornish’s turn to face the squad from Bristol.
The singles started well with the Duchy winning 3 out of the 4 singles contests, Emily James, Bron Wotton and Josh Pearce all winning through. Ross Lashbrook was unlucky in his tie taking the Avon number one to three sets and just missing out 14-21 in the third end to a very fit and tricky opponent Horace Tse.
Ross got his revenge in the men’s doubles, teaming up with Tom Lyle. The “on form” pair from Launceston won an interesting three set tussle with the Avon number one pair and extended the Duchy lead further to 4-1. The Cornish second pair of Chris Glasson and Josh Pearce went down in two sets to a hard hitting Avon second pair. “We lifted too much" commented Josh
In the Ladies doubles Emily James and Jo Philip just got run out in the third end 18 -21, while Bron Wotton and Daphne Luke changed tactics and took their absorbing match in three ends. So with a 5-3 score line going into the mixed, it was very much in the Duchy’s favour.
Chris Glasson and Jo Philip devastated their opponents in two ends showing a quality team performance. Daphne Luke and Tom Lyle in the second mixed did not let the side down with a fantastic three ended victory. It went right to the wire but the Cornish duo took the last end 23-21 leaving a fantastic Cornwall overall victory of 7-3. This must have put Devon at unease having only got a 6-4 win against Avon.
“We definitely had the physiological edge” suggested Team manager Kelvin Edwards.
“The matches are out of 10 games, so I placed our strengths in the Devon match in just making sure we got 6 wins to take the tie” continued Kelvin.
Sadly, and beyond the run of play Cornwall lost to Devon 3-7.
“We need to be more consistent, more of the time” commented Kelvin “If we played like we did against Avon there would be no question we could have reversed this score line, Devon did not win this fixture, we lost it!” Harsh words from the Cornwall manager, Kelvin continued,
“There were some outstanding performances today and at times every member of the team really played like they wanted to win, but we just need to see it through, think a little and finish the job”
“Player of the day, Tom Lyle, tactically superb”
