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RICHARD EATON REPORTS
Day THREE:
Love
on the badminton
court works for Tracey
Tracey Hallam, England's highest ever ranked singles player,
enjoyed love on and off the badminton court while recapturing the women's
singles title at the English national championships in Manchester today.
The world number eight from Burton-on-Trent recovered spectacularly from a
game and 0-4 down to win 8-11,11-4,11-0 against the surprise survivor
Julie Pittard, who was conspicuously without the help of coach
Steve Butler.
That was because Butler, a famous former England international, is also
the boy-friend of Hallam, and the conflict of interest required him to sit
out the match fidgeting nervously in the bleechers.
"It was very difficult because I work with both," said Butler, "And
because I was coaching Julie to win the nationals, which she very nearly
did."
 Hallam
smiled at the thought. "I asked Steve what he was going to do, and he said
'I can't do it,'" she said, presumably meaning that he couldn't work
against her. But Pittard had a different version. "I said 'Who will you
support?' And he said: 'I can't answer that,'" she claimed.
Whether these confused vibes had anything to do with the schizoid twist of
direction of a contest divided which was almost completely into two halves
is hard to say, though it is tempting to speculate.
Certainly when Pittard could hit down, she prospered, much as she had
while overwhelming the defending champion Elizabeth Cann the day before,
and when Hallam denied Pittard chances to do that by flicking the shuttle
flat and deep to the corners, or tying it up at the net, Pittard
foundered.
"I let her into the game and she relaxed and then I couldn't change it,"
bemoaned Pittard, whose ability to play to such a standard while holding
down a full-time job as a calibration engineer nevertheless amazed many
people.
Hallam had wanted a win as a valuable stepping stone to a gold medal at
next month's Commonwealth Games, and began to think about that when things
were going wrong.
"I was thinking about it during the game - wrongly," she admitted.
"But I thought if I lost I would be losing momentum just at the wrong
time." But she regained it just when it seemed she had lost it.
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Nick's dig at the Selectors
The other singles final brought a dig at the England selectors they will
probably welcome. Nick Kidd, the former Australian junior champion
who has been left out of England's team for the Games, beat the only
singles player who has been included, Aamir Ghaffar.
 Kidd
won 13-15,15-3,15-2, increasingly outplaying the defending champion with a
high-speed and sometimes spectacularly athletic attack.
"Being left out was really what motivated me," said the man who moved to
England four years ago. "I was pretty disappointed with that."
Ghaffar may have been tired after two very long matches yesterday, but did
not dwell on his failure to complete a hat-trick of men's singles titles.
"I shall concentrate on the European championships and the Thomas Cup
rather than sulking about what has happened," he said wisely.
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And the Doubles ...
Simon Archer, who won Britain's first ever Olympic medal in
badminton six years ago in Sydney, may have lost his last chance of adding
to his 15 national titles after a painful defeat in the men's doubles
final.
Archer looked red with emotion and spoke tremulously after a 15-7,15-4
loss to two former partners Robert Blair and Anthony Clark, in which he
further injured an already damaged rib muscle "I have a lot of pride and
I'm just so sorry," said the 31-year-old, who is his last full-time
season.
At least he avoided the fate of Ella Tripp, who was too unwell to
contest the women's doubles final, obliging her and her partner Jo
Nicholas to concede to Gail Emms and Donnas Kellogg.
For an epilogue, Emms and Nathan Robertson, the world's number one
mixed doubles pair, won an unexpectedly one-sided final 15-2, 15-3 against
Kellogg and Clark, who strangely never did themselves justice.
"We certainly expected it to be harder than that because we play each
other lots of times in training and we have really close games," said
Robertson.
Clark and Kellogg seemed to expect something similar. Kellogg once hit a
shuttlecock into the crowd in disbelief and Clark yelled desperately at
1-14 in the second game.
"Come on we can still win this," he called, but after winning just one
more point, served into the net. It had been a day with more than enough
for a psychologist's thesis.
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Day TWO:
Aamir's two great
escapes
Aamir Ghaffar, aiming for a hat-trick
of men's singles titles at the English national championships, needed to
make two dramatic comebacks before reaching the final in Manchester.
 First
Ghaffar was a game and 4-7 down before coming back to win 8-15, 15-8, 15-4
against Michael Edge, a former England international competing on
his home patch, and then he was a game and 3-6 down before recovering to
win 10-15, 15-8, 15-9 against Toby Honey, the tenacious third seed.
Each time Ghaffar had enough self-assurance to find a way out of
difficulty, aided by the fact that his style these days incorporates an
increasingly wider range of options in attack and defence.
But he had very different views about the comebacks: "I'm calmer than I
used to be, and when I am behind I still know that I can do it," he said
after the quarter-final recovery against Edge in the morning.
Then he said: "I still think I'm putting too much pressure on myself,"
after escape number two against Honey in the semi-finals in the evening.
"I care too much - maybe I should stop caring!" Well, we all have to cope
with unexpectedly altering emotions.
 Ghaffar
also showed a good deal of physical resilience, particularly when
resisting a late charge from Honey, who came from 2-12 to 9-12 with a
series of spirited attacks.
Honey decided he was too tired to play any more long rallies, having used
up a lot of energy in a 95-minute thriller with Nathan Rice, and his
seven-point attacking sequence made you wonder what might have happened
had he gambled on all out aggression a little earlier.
Ghaffar now has a repeat of last year's final with Nick Kidd, who
is top seed this year, though he didn't look it as he was going 2-12 down
in the first game to Rajiv Ouseph, the 19-year-old fourth-seeded European
junior champion.
The Hounslow teenager was full of velvet disguises and deceptively
languorous movement, but the sheer energy of Kidd's attacks carried him to
a sequence of 14 points in a row and eventually to a 17-14, 15-6 victory. |
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Hallam escapes twice too ...
 A
day of notable comebacks saw the other singles top seed, Tracey Hallam,
also escape from trouble twice. First she recovered from 1-10 down to beat
Rachel Howard, the 20-year-old former national junior champion, by
13-11, 11-5, and then came back from a game down to beat the former
champion Julia Mann 5-11, 11-8, 11-7.
Hallam's victory, which is remarkably only the second she has ever
achieved over her long-lasting rival, has probably put an end to Mann's
hopes of beating the record of eight singles titles she shared with
Gillian Gilks. The 34-year-old is suggesting this could be her last
nationals.
Despite a whole heap of impending shocks, the day finished with only one
upset. It ensured there would be a new champion in the women's singles
because Elizabeth Cann, the 2005 champion, was well beaten in the
semi-finals by part-timer Jill Pittard. The calibration
engineer from Warwickshire trampled all over the titleholder 11-5, 11-0,
with Cann quite unable to halt the constant stream of attacks steepling
down from the tall third seed's racket.
 "I
think that was the best I have ever played," said an excited Pittard. "She
beat me quite easily last time. But now she had all the pressure.
"I decided to play very very fast so she had to no chance to attack me. If
I had lifted the shuttle she could have put it away. It was a good game
plan and it worked well.
"Steve (Butler, her coach) told me to believe in myself and perhaps now I
do."
Whether Butler will be giving her similar advice before the final is a
moot point. Hallam is Butler's girl-friend. |
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Day ONE:
Ghaffar's Hat-Trick Quest
Aamir
Ghaffar, who says he wants to make a special statement by completing a
hat-trick of men's singles titles at the English national championships,
had to work unexpectedly hard before reaching the quarter-finals in
Manchester.
 Ghaffar, who made his name by making an England debut while fasting for
Ramadan four years ago, says he is partly trying to win for the sake of
his Muslim faith.
But he needed that and brains to get past the ambitiously attacking
Yorskhireman, Alex Marritt, who came back dangerously from 10-13 to
parity in the first game and led 7-3 in the second before Ghaffar won
17-14,15-8.
Marritt often prospered in flat, fierce mid-court exchanges and when he
reached 14-all in the first game the umpire immediately called "game
point". Ghaffar admitted that he had been thinking of calling for a one
point sudden death finish.
"But
then I thought, no, better to set it to three," he said. "If I had lost
that point and the first game he might have played even better and there
would have been more pressure."
Ghaffar determined to try to keep the shuttle down on those three points
and deny Marritt the chance to attack so much, and it worked well.
Afterwards he seemed pleased with his performance, despite the effort
involved "It was good to get a bit of a run like that because it shook
down the nerves and will help me for the rest of the tournament," he
concluded.
The day before the tournament, the Peshawar-born Southall man explained
where some of his motivation came from. "Just to have people saying he's a
Muslim and he's doing well, to show that Muslims are not all bad, but
mostly good really - that's really important," he emphasized. "Yes I am
playing for my faith."
Tomorrow he plays Michael Edge, the seventh-seeded local hope and
former England international.
 "It's
nice to get going and get a feel for the venue, one side seemed a bit
quicker than the other. It should be
a tough match tomorrow against Michael Edge. It funny how the seedings
work, but as long as you're one or two it doesn't make much
difference."
Aamir Ghaffar |
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 "I
had a comfortable match this morning, although neither of us played at
our best, we're training partners so that makes it hard when you come
to play in a tournament.
"I'd played Aamir before and lost 9 and 6, and I wasn't expecting and
easy match tonight. The top players have more experience of playing in
these big arenas and in front of big crowds. This is the only big
event I play, most of the time there's only a few people watching."
Alex Marritt |
Michael
Edge
Elizabeth Cann
Nathan
& Gail in demand |
TEENAGERS JOIN TOP SEEDS
Tracey
Hallam, who hopes to win back the women's title in preparation for
winning the gold medal in next month's Commonwealth Games in Melbourne,
started with far less effort.
Hallam's 11-1,11-0 win over Hana Littlecott of Hampshire should be the
first step tow ards a final with the defending champion, Elizabeth Cann,
whom, bizarrely, could also be a rival in Melbourne, where she will be
representing Jersey. Cann beat Francesca Edelmann of Hertfordshire 11-1,
11-2.
Two teenagers, Rajiv Ouseph and Michelle Cheung, both
earmarked as potential medal challengers at the London 2012 Olympics, each
showed their promise by winning twice.
Cheung, a 15-year-old English junior champion from Milton Keynes eased
through to the quarter-finals of the women's singles with an 11-1,11-0 win
over Katie Comras of Hertfordshire, and an 11-6,11-2 success against Sarah
Walker of Essex 11-6,11-2, but Ouseph, an 18-year-old European junior
champion from Hounslow, had to work hard after beating David Shawley of
Hampshire 15-3,15-4, needing to come from 6-10 in the second game to
overcome a battling Alan Clarkson from Lancashire 15-5,15-11, in the men's
singles.
Nathan & Gail untroubled
Earlier the two star names, Nathan Robertson and Gail Emms, were on
and off quicker than anyone with a 15-5,15-0 second round win over Matt
Hanson of Avon and Julie Pike of Yorkshire in the mixed doubles.
The Olympic silver medalists and world's number one ranked pair want to
retain the English national title as a preparation for taking away the
Commonwealth title from their team mate Simon Archer who won it (with the
now retired Jo Goode) here in Manchester four years ago.
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