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04-Feb-07:

Richard Eaton

There was history and histrionics, and more besides. World champions Nathan Robertson and Gail Emms lost their national title and Robertson gained a yellow card for stamping on the shuttle - but the 23-21, 14-21, 22-20 defeat to Anthony Clark and Donna Kellogg still enhanced the reputations of England's most famous badminton players.

That was because the level of the best rallies made it one of the most memorable matches in the tournament's 44 years. And the defeat created brought to light just how outstanding the favourites have been during the six years since they paired up for a second time.

It was Robertson's and Emms' first loss to domestic opposition in all that time - a sequence involving something  like 60 matches - and it happened on the first occasion a world final has ever been repeated in an English national final.

Five months ago Clark and Kellogg were well beaten by Robertson and Emms in Madrid. Here in the Manchester Velodrome they found conditions different, the state of their opponents different, and the mood of the match very, very different .



"We knew that when we play Nathan and Gail we needed to get slower shuttles because they are too good a pair to rally fast with," said Clark.

"And today the shuttles were a lot slower which enabled us to play our game more.This is more defensive, and turning it to attack, and we did it really well.

"In the last few weeks we have been struggling with our movement and today we moved superbly. If we can play like this we will be a force to reckon with."

Nevertheless, Robertson and Emms hit their heights only in patches, and had moments when they looked tired and jaded, but it was part of Clark's and Kellogg's achievement to take advantage of this so well.

"We were certainly tired, and they had three or four days extra in which to prepare," Emms agreed, when the matter of their physical state was raised. "But we got close even though we weren't at our best, and we don't want to take anything away from them. They are a world class pair and they played very well."

It was not only brilliance and magnanimity which the match contained, but controversy and mistakes, leads won and lost, and an outcome which remained uncertain for as long as it was possible to.

It would probably have been a different outcome too, had Robertson and Emms capitalized on a 20-17 lead in the first game. The significance of their failure to do this was underlined by Robertson stamping on the shuttle at the end of the game, and getting yellow card for it.

Later he tossed his racket almost up into the beams before catching it deftly one-handed and on another occasion was spoken to by the umpire for walking away cursing.

But these were reactions which most of us can relate to, and which make Robertson such an identifiable character as well as a near-genius badminton player. He also managed one overhead backhand punched clear, a fiendishly difficult shot, which went for a winner, and a Danish swipe at a shuttle which he had originally decided was going out, but which he retrieved so well that he was still able to win the point. Probably no-one else on the court could have managed those.

The crux of the contest came after the change of ends in the final game. Robertson and Emms had led 10-8 and had gone 10-11 down before subsiding to 11-13, 12-16, and 14-18. During this phase one line decision made Emms call out: "Oh no,no,no, that really was out," and walk around with a hand on her face.

In these vital moments Kellogg was finding it far less difficult to defend against the marauding Robertson than she had in Madrid, and it was her cross court whip which got the world silver medalists three match points at 20-17.

Robertson and Emms superbly saved those, but on the fourth, at 21-20, Clark produced a breathtakingly deft cross court net shot which fell perfectly into the only available open space.

"This is a fantastic result, because we had never beaten them before," said Kellogg. "We were disappointed with how we played in the world final, but this sets us up nicely for the All-England championships next month."

Later she won two titles when she and Emms, the European champions, made a successful defence of the women's doubles title. "I am absolutely knackered," said Kellogg. "I think after the mixed doubles, both of us were really fatigued.

"After three sets it's as much mental tiredness as physical. It's taken a few years to win two trophies together but it's nice to have done it at last."

Kellogg uttered these "together" words before Clark had made a successful defence of the men's doubles title, but she was evidently confident that he would - and sure enough he did, with Robert Blair, his fellow world silver medalist.

Cann and Kidd take two

Meanwhile Elizabeth Cann became one of the very few players to win a title unseeded - a success which became even more of a rarity as it also involved her winning the title back.

Her 21-19, 21-17 triumph came against the top seed, Jill Pittard, and was a reward for preventing her tall opponent from getting a steep angle on the shuttle too often. She did that by playing to the net and keeping the rallies flat as often as she could.

"I knew I had a pattern, and it was a matter of whether of whether I had the skills to do it or not," Cann said. "I was really disappointed to lose in the semi-finals last year (to Pittard) and I really wanted revenge this year."

Another titleholder to triumph was the men's singles champion, Nick Kidd, though this was by far the least straight forward of the day's three successful defences.

Kidd had nearly not played the tournament because of a calf muscle injury and he had looked far too hampered during his quarter-final victory over Aamir Ghaffar to have much chance of surviving. But he produced a gutsy display of converting athletic defence into sudden penetrating attack during  a 21-15, 21-15 win against Nathan Rice.



Afterwards he used it to ram home a couple of points.

"I'm number one now," Kidd claimed, "and it's a real shame that Andrew Smith (England's highest ranked player) doesn't put himself on the line. I can't understand it."

Then Kidd turned his verbals on to his funding, which he recently lost. "It should give me a strong case to regain it," he reckoned. "I think it was hard on me to lose it and I have beaten Aamir Ghaffar who has it. I have a meeting next week when we shall discuss it."

His coach, Sara Sankey, was even more outspoken. "He gets no help," she said. "And I am very angry with that. He's not allowed to play at the national centre, and he has to book his own courts. Maybe he has not got the results but he is one of England's best players and we should be helping players like this."

But there is no immediate likelihood of restoring Kidd's funding, according to Ian Wright, England's head coach. "The GB (funding) criteria are published and public," he said. "They are UK Sport approved and enforced, and Nick's level of international results don't meet the criteria, and so he doesn't get GB funding I'm afraid."

In which case the national champion and his coach may have to remain angry a little while longer. Hopefully channelled to good effect.

03-Feb, Day Two:
A

Richard Eaton

It was the one final which was desired more than any other. Nathan Robertson and Gail Emms will play Anthony Clark and Donna Kellogg, their friends, rivals, sparring partners, travel companions and regular room mates - and the four of them will make history for the second time in five months.

When they met in the Palacio de Deportes in Madrid, it was the first time there had ever been an all-English world final; when they meet in the Manchester Velodrome it will be the first time that there has ever been a re-run of a world final in an English national championships.

There was rarely much doubt that it would happen, but there was a certain fascination in seeing whether any advantage could be achieved by either pair by the way in which they got there. There wasn't - though that made the post-match chat a little more intriguing.



Both pairs won twice, but at least Robertson and Emms looked a little fresher than they did on the opening day as they overcame Chris Tonks and Natalie Munt, the surprise semi-finalists, by 21-15, 21-13.

Clark and Kellogg's satisfaction will have come mostly from having scotched a potential threat from David Lindley and Suzanne Rayappan, who had been in the form of their lives in Korean Open last week. The score was 21-13, 21-14, and within a few moments Clark was reeling off the words even more impressively than the points.

"We have to play freely in the final," he said. "A lot of times in the past we have fallen into their (Robertson and Emms) hands a little bit.

"From the first day I played badminton I have known Nathan and we know each other's games inside out. But he and they just have the edge. Their knowledge of the game is very high and we have to take it to them. We have to move quicker than them, and get the shuttle going down for us. We will go out there and play free."

Robertson, by contrast, already sounded so free you wondered whether there was a risk of his mind wandering off.

"Tomorrow will be the same as last year," he said.

"And we have played them a few times, so it's just another match. It's the same situation as the world championships and last year's final. We have a job to do and it's a job we will do."

Most people think they will. And it will probably require a case of mental drift for Robertson and Emms to fail to clinch their fifth national title together, even though their opponents are as able as Clark and Kellogg. But however predictable the outcome may seem, the rallies will surely sparkle.

Clark and Emms each have chances of winning two titles. Emms will be favoured to do so for the third successive year after she and Kellogg, the European women's doubles champions, reached the final without dropping a game.

That made it four matches in a day - and still Emms had enough energy to play a lengthy giggle-and-hit session with Nieve, Robertson's nine-year-old daughter.

One Surprise in the Singles

The singles produced one significant surprise. Rajiv Ouseph, the top-seeded European junior champion was beaten 14-21, 21-12, 21-19 by Nathan Rice, who lost all three of their previous encounters in the ASICS elite circuit.

But Rice set out to play of much of the match as possible at the net, which worked at least some of the time, and when Ouseph settled into his familiar sequences of skillfully soaking up the pressure, Rice increasingly picked his moments well to attack.

Ouseph still led 18-15 in the decider, but did not play the decisive points as well as he might. "I let it get away from me," he said. "I felt really focused," said Rice. "It was cat and mouse a lot of the time because we both like playing at the net."

He now plays Nick Kidd, the defending champion, who did extraordinarily well to reach the final again, as he had considered pulling out of the tournament because of a calf muscle strain. He played with it heavily strapped, and halfway through his quarter-final with Aamir Ghaffar, looked increasingly hampered.

Kidd also recovered from 5-11 down in the decider, at which stage it looked odds on that Ghaffar, twice the former champion, would avenge his narrow defeat in last year's final.

But Kidd hung on bravely, despite reducing his ambitions in attack, to win 27-25, 15-21, 21-16. Almost as remarkably, he recovered well enough to beat Toby Honey in straight games six hours later, though it is anybody's guess what sort of condition he will be in for the final.

The women's singles final is between the top-seeded Jill Pittard, who is hoping for third time lucky in her third successive final, and the unseeded Elizabeth Cann, who is nevertheless probably the unofficial favourite.

Pittard, with her steep attacks and considerable intelligence, has played well to come through without dropping a game, but Cann won the title two years ago and is playing at a similar level again.

Her 21-12, 21-6 victory over the second seeded Michelle Cheung, was a triumph of self-belief against a promisingly talented, but slightly tense 17-year-old who had hoped for more from herself and will one day undoubtedly deliver it.

Did Cann think she would win the title again? "Yes, I think I have a good chance," she said.

Tension at the Velodrome

It is certainly normal for players to feel a special tension at the nationals, when sponsorships as well as reputations are at stake. And sometimes even when they aren't.

Several times there were incidents where tempers were near boiling point, two of them involving Matthew Honey, the younger brother of Toby.

Once he celebrated winning an easy point so enthusiastically in a men's doubles that his opponent ended up with a partner's hand round his throat as Robert Adcock and Robin Middleton took exception.

Later, after Toby Honey had lost to Kidd, Matthew became involved in an eyeballing encounter with the national champion. His objection, that Kidd had been making noises which might have influenced the line judges unfairly, was similar to that which Ghaffar had made in last year's final.

Afterwards umpire Elaine Senior told Kidd that he should make more of an effort to cool the noise. As he seeks to hang on to his title against the odds, that may not be easy for him to do.

Robertson & Emms



Match Control

New & Old partners


Jill Pittard



Nick Kidd


One in the eye for Aamir

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