TODAY at the Nationals ...
daily reports from the Velodrome
Sat 2nd, Day TWO
After a manic first day which saw play extend for over 13 hours
on four courts, today saw the quarter and semi-finals of each
event, with the venue compacted down to three courts. Roundup
from Richard Eaton
Anthony Clark, the only player to win two medals at the
2006 world championships, is aiming to become the highest
profile winner at the English national championships for the
second successive year after getting to two finals once more.
Clark is overwhelming favourite to do the doubles double again
after reaching the mixed showdown with fellow former world
finalist Donna Kellogg, and the last hurdle of the men’s
doubles with former world bronze medallist Nathan Robertson
– but with the excitement he displays you would think it was
something he had never expected.
“It’s
fantastic I can win another national title,” Clark reckoned
after he and Robertson had overcome the promising Robert Adcock
and Robin Middleton by 21-10, 21-14.
“You don’t get to win many titles in your career and it’s always
nice to win on home turf, because the pressure’s on us to
perform as we are the ones everyone is going for in a national
championship.”
But it did little good no matter how much the two youngsters
tried to go at Clark and Robertson, who showed some of the form
which won them a European silver medal together in Geneva 2004.
It prompted speculation that they might renew their partnership
after the Beijing Olympics in August.
But they refused to be drawn on that, though both kept open the
possibility that it might happen. Robertson also suggested that
retirement was not in his plans despite the likelihood that his
fellow Olympic silver medallist Gail Emms will do so later this
year.
The two regular room mates will next play another pair of young
ones. This time it is the unseeded Richard Eidestedt and
Chris Langridge, who suggested that their promise is already
being realised with a stunning semi-final victory by 21-11,
24-22 over the top-seeded Robert Blair and David Lindley.
“It was such a great result for them – it was difficult to
concentrate on our game because we kept watching them,” admitted
Clark, who earlier reached the mixed doubles final with Donna
Kellogg.
They did that with a 21-6, 21-18 win over the 35-year-old former
Olympic bronze medalist Simon Archer and another of England’s
hopefuls, Sarah Bok, for which their reward is an encounter with
Robin Middleton and Liza Smith, another pair with London
2012 in their sights.
These two came through in the half vacated by Robertson and Emms
due to the nasty virus which she picked up during their Far East
tour the week before last.
Top two in Women's final
Earlier the chances that Commonwealth champion Tracey Hallam
may delay her retirement and prolong her career beyond the
Beijing Olympics in August probably increased after she too
reached two finals.
The 32-year-old began her gruelling four-match day with a 21-5,
21-14 singles win over Caroline Westley, an England performance
squad member, and later won the semi-final 21-18, 21-16 against
Jill Pittard, last year’s runner-up.
In between these successes Hallam continued her impressive stint
as a last moment substitute for Emms by teaming up with Kellogg,
the other European women’s doubles champion, to overcome Sarah
Walker and Sam Ward 21-9, 21-16.
Later, looking anything but a scratch pair, Hallam and Kellogg
outplayed Bok and Smith by 21-14, 21-11, which means that
Kellogg is a third player with a good chance of winning two
titles.
Emms herself had helped persuade Hallam to act as stand in, and
Kellogg was very pleased with her last moment partner. “It was
definitely a good decision. Tracey’s a great player, and has a
very competitive spirit. We are learning well together as we go
on,” she said.
Hallam will play Elizabeth Cann, the second–seeded
defending champion, in a women's singles final which England
head coach Ian Wright feels “could be the best for many years.”
Cann
is in the finest shape of her career and came through with a
smooth but hustling 21-14, 21-13 win over the surprise
semi-finalist, Fontaine Chapman. Earlier though the champion had
a scare when she was taken to 21-19 in the final game by
Sarah Renton, a colourfully different outsider.
The unseeded player from Northumberland has been a police woman,
a football coach in the United States and is currently a
non-teaching head of year at George Stephenson High School in
Newcastle.
She has also been captain of the Newcastle United ladies
football team which reached the fifth round of the Cup and with
such a full life it is hardly surprising she has needed to make
two comebacks to prolong her badminton career.
“I still felt fit enough at the end,” the 30-year-old said.
Given her CV it was hardly surprising.
All-Asian men's final
Earlier the men’s singles saw Rajiv Ouseph, the top seed,
and Aamir Ghaffar, twice the former champion, come
through to the final, with Ghaffar upsetting the second-seeded
Nathan Rice, last year’s runner-up, by 15-21, 21-12, 21-17 in 62
absorbing minutes, the longest match of the tournament so far.
Rice, solid in defence and steady in the rallies, looked as
though he might frustrate the Ghaffar attacks after coming from
9-14 down to win the first game and then getting back from 5-10
to lead 14-13 in the decider.
At that moment Rice launched a rare heavy smash and set himself
to kill the return at the net, only for Ghaffar to make a
brilliant block, win the rally and take six points out of the
next seven.
That turned the match, though the pleasingly unpredictable fifth
seed suggested it had turned earlier, after he realized he had
been trying to rally too fast and win the rallies too quickly.
From the second game onwards he began to play more patiently.
“It’s partly because I have a problem with sparring partners,”
Ghaffar claimed. “I used to spar with Nick Kidd (last year’s
national champion) and we had long rallies, which was good, but
he’s not in England now and I need to find other people who can
do that with me.”
In the final he will play an Ouseph who is full of his usual
deft touches and skilful manoeuvring but also a little more
physically strong than he was last year when he disappointingly
lost in the semis to Rice.
This time Ouseph reached his first final by overcoming Mark
Constable, the 2002 champion, 21-14, 17-21, 21-13, though it
looked as though the muscular Warwickshire player had the
favourite's measure after the second game.
But Ouseph got several quick points at the start of the decider
and after that appeared to regain his wind and his confidence
rather suddenly, though he phrased it differently.
“I was all right once I got my legs back,” he said. He has been
playing at a higher level than Ghaffar recently, but the
Peshawar-born player has more experience. The outcome of
England’s first all-Asian final is very hard to pick.
Archer & Bok bt Adcock & White
23/21, 17/21, 21/19
Clark & Kellogg bt Ellis & Munt
21/14, 21/13
Bok
and Archer make the semis
Having beaten the third seeds Lindley and Rayappan yesterday,
Simon Archer and Sarah Bok continued their run with a 32/21,
17/21, 21/19 win over Chris Adcock & Gabby White to progress to
the last four.
Having edged the first 23/21 after saving a couple of game
points, Archer required attention from the physio. "How long do
I get for this?" he enquired of the umpire, "I've been out of
the game for a while so I don't know the rules, but I still
argue about them!".
Adcock & White levelled, but Archer & Bok prevailed in a tense
finish to the third game which featured a touch of controversy
as White served short at 17/18, thinking Archer had stopped
play, but saw the point awarded against her.
Daniel Plant couldn't follow up on yesterday's exploits as he
went out to two-time champion Aamir Ghaffar, the fifth
seed, in three games. Mark Constable, seeded seven,
overcame fourth seed Neil White to set up a semi-final against
top seed Rajiv Ouseph.
Ghaffar faces last year's runner-up Nathan Rice.
Second-seeded Rice was pushed hard by Ben Beckman, maintaining a
slender lead through most of the the deciding game.
Beckman levelled at 17-all but a few untimely errors gave the
lead back to Rice and he wasted no time in closing out the
match.
Top
seed Tracey Hallam eased into the semi-finals with a
solid win over Caroline Westley, but tonight's opponent Jill
Pittard was made to work hard by Kate Robertshaw before last
year's finalist clinched her place in the semis.
Two close matches in the bottom half as defending champion
Elizabeth Cann recovered from a game down and then held off
a fightback in the third to see off Sarah Renton, while
Warwickshire's unseeded Fontaine Chapman recorded the
upset of the day as she beat fourth seed Rachel Howard.
Howard fought back from a game down, but Chapman established a
7/2 lead in the third and never looked like relinquishing it as
she moved through to tonight's semi-finals.
Sarah Renton, a former policewoman from Northumberland
whose badminton ability seems to have been half forgotten after
twice going out of the sport, came close to causing the upset of
the tournament in a quarter-final which was as up and down as
the track on the Manchester velodrome within which it took
place.
Renton came back so tenaciously from 12-18 down in the final
game against titleholder Elizabeth Cann that there were
moments when you could envisage the unseeded player denying the
women’s singles what some say should be its best final showdown
for years.
Cann, who is not out of the running for an Olympic place and has
been in the best form of her life in recent months, was hanging
on grimly at 20-19, battling to keep a length against the drift,
and with the momentum swung dramatically away from her.
Renton appeared in control of the final rally and it was only a
lift wide from a good court position which denied her the chance
to get back to parity and a Russian roulette finish.
“I
had a chance to make it there,” said the 30-year-old whom many
people knew nothing about as her name does not appear on-line in
any of the England or Great Britain squads.
That is not surprising. She went out of the game with an injury
when she was 17, came back in her early 20’s, found it
impossible combine badminton with police work, and went to the
US where she was a football coach, and returned to the
shuttlecock game two and a half years ago. Indeed, she may be
better known for captaining the Newcastle United women's
football team ...
Renton combined excellent physical fitness with a good tactical
sense and considerable tenacity, something which must be hard to
maintain with her current job as a non-teaching head of year at
George Stephenson High School in Newcastle.
She then looked out of it after missing a sitter at the net
which would have brought her back to 13-14 in the final game,
making two errors in the emotional aftermath, and suffering a
further disappointment when Cann got a lucky net cord to reach a
six-point lead.
It
was all the more surprising that Cann had to dig so deep because
she has never been fitter and recently scored one of the best
wins of her career against world number 24 Kanako Yonekura.
“I had a big break for training in the summer,” Can said. “And
it set me up well. It set me up better to focus on tactical and
technical things, and when the results improved my confidence
got greater too.”
It was as well she did, for she had very little spare, but her
survival gained her a semi-final meeting with the surprise
survivor Fontaine Chapman, a member of England’s under 19
world class performance squad.
Chapman
played well to take her chance by 21-12, 10-21, 21-11 against
the third-seeded Rachel Howard, who is still trying to
recover fully from her pre-Christmas fitness problems.
Top-seeded Tracey Hallam meanwhile came through to play a
semi-final with last year’s runner-up Jill Pittard by
overcoming an England performance squad player Caroline Westley
21-5, 21-14.
The
enduring excellence of Hallam and the encouraging improvement of
Cann caused Ian Wright, England’s head coach, to suggest
that a meeting between the two “could produce the best final for
many years.”
The men’s semi-final line-up sees top-seeded Rajiv Ouseph
take on former champion Mark Constable, and the twice former
champion Aamir Ghaffar play Nathan Rice, last
year’s runner-up.
Having had a two-point lead throughout most of the final game in
a 2-12, 18-21, 21-17 win over Ben Beckman, the promising sixth
seed who pulled it back excitingly to 17-17 only to let the
chance slip.
Earlier Simon Archer, the 36-year-old former Olympic
bronze medalist who is now retired from full-time competition,
amused the crowd by used all his cunning to reach the
semi-finals of the mixed doubles unexpectedly.
Archer, partnering one of England’s best young prospects,
Sarak Bok, had already beaten the third-seeded David Lindley
and Suzanne Rayappan, before fashioning a slightly controversial
victory by 23-21, 17-21, 21-9 win over Chris Adcock and Gabby
White, two of Britain’s hopes for the 2012 Olympics.
With the score at 18-17 in the final game Archer raised his arm
to suggest he was not ready. He was still lowering it as she
served, only to serve the shuttle short, causing a dispute as to
whether or not she had been distracted and the point should
actually stand.
In fact it did, helping to generate just a little extra impetus
for Archer and Bok to cross the finishing line. The former
All-England champion clearly still revelled in the competition
even though he has fitness problems these days.
At one stage he called for time to have his knee strapped,
asking the umpire how long he had in which to do it.
“I don’t really know the rules, I have not been playing for a
while,” Archer said, making some of the spectators hoot with
laughter. “But I still argue about them,” he added.
“It’s
fantastic I can win another national title,” Clark reckoned
after he and Robertson had overcome the promising Robert Adcock
and Robin Middleton by 21-10, 21-14.
Cann
is in the finest shape of her career and came through with a
smooth but hustling 21-14, 21-13 win over the surprise
semi-finalist, Fontaine Chapman. Earlier though the champion had
a scare when she was taken to 21-19 in the final game by
Sarah Renton, a colourfully different outsider.
“I
had a chance to make it there,” said the 30-year-old whom many
people knew nothing about as her name does not appear on-line in
any of the England or Great Britain squads.
It
was all the more surprising that Cann had to dig so deep because
she has never been fitter and recently scored one of the best
wins of her career against world number 24 Kanako Yonekura.
Chapman
played well to take her chance by 21-12, 10-21, 21-11 against
the third-seeded Rachel Howard, who is still trying to
recover fully from her pre-Christmas fitness problems.
