JESTERS UNDER-35’s TOURNAMENT, THE CUMBERLAND CLUB – 18th February 2023
We have now established a regular cadence for these events and following The Queen’s Club (Jul-22) and Southbank (Oct-22), we held our third instalment of ‘Young Jesters’ at the leafy West Hampstead location of The Cumberland Club.
Our format is now well-established – 30 players (6 teams of 5) playing a group-stage followed by a play-off for positions (each player getting 3x PAR 15 matches). We are keen to bring innovation into the mix and so the excel model was integrated into Google Sheets for all players to self-report their scores (rather than relying on Andrew’s laptop or Laura’s iPad).
It all went smoothly aside from one match between Team Coll and Team Farag who forget about the PAR 15 with sudden-death at 14-all and entered 19-17 into the system, before ‘admin’ had to step in. The same teams were involved in yet more controversy when they finished the group-stage on identical points (130 each). Cue whipping out the (non-existent) rulebook and Andrew’s Team Coll went through at the expense of Owen’s Team Farag on points countback, albeit under protest.
Having topped their respective groups, Teams Asal and Sherbini faced each other in the final. It was a topsy-turvy match that went down to the wire. Having won at 5th string, Anna Gibson went on against Cynthia Low knowing she needed 7 points to close out the victory. Scraping a couple of points at the death (an excellent nick and a lucky frame), Anna secured the victory for Team Sherbini (Ewan B, Tim D, Matilda P, Anna G, Anna G).
Just to explain, a last-minute dropout to injury meant Anna stepped in to play twice for her team (2x matches, 2x pressure, 2x excitement). Special shout-outs also go to Gregory Dighton and Emily Peach, who also doubled up for their teams, as well as to Josh Carter who after making the dinner arrangements with Cumberland, ironically was hospitalised with food poisoning and had to miss said dinner (update: Josh is now fine!).
Thank you to all attendees, the organisers (Andrew, Laura, Owen, Josh), and the Cumberland Club for kindly and diligently hosting us.
Our next event will be at The Hurlingham Club on Sat 3 June. With that said, we would also like to encourage more regular, smaller informal fixtures alongside these larger quarterly events. If you are a younger Jester (or young at heart?) and would like to get involved or organise an event, please contact Andrew Lindsay, Laura Neill or Owen Riddall.
Andrew Lindsay (Jester), Organiser.
