A large team of 35 children competed for Leicestershire in the 4 Counties Invitational event against Warwickshire, Oxfordshire and Northamptonshire in Rugby on Sunday 26th November. This year there was also an U18 section in addition to U11s, U11 Girls and U9s.
A strong Leicestershire U18 team (8 boards) finished 2nd with wins against both Northamptonshire (4.5 – 3.5) and Oxfordshire (6.5-1.5) but were beaten by Warwickshire in the first round (5.5-2.5), who won all three matches thus taking the title. Sasha Kerbel had a great competition winning all three games on board 7, whilst team leader Tom Brown was unbeaten with 2.5/3 and both George Worrow-Goodin and Peter Mottram-Epson recorded two wins.
The U11 team (8 boards) also finished 2nd and so very nearly won it, losing only on tie break to Warwickshire, both counties having beaten Oxfordshire and Northamptonshire and drawn against each other. The separating factor was the fact that Warwickshire’s wins were by slightly more convincing margins so that they were 16-13 ahead of us on overall game points. Nevertheless it was quite an improvement on last year’s performance when we finished a fairly distant 3rd behind Oxon and Warks. Rakym Serik was invincible on board 2 with 3 straight wins, whilst Umar Syed was unbeaten with 2/3 on board 3 and Kareem Patel and Austin Meynell also both won 2 games.
The U11 Girls (4 boards) drew their matches against both Warwickshire and Northamptonshire but were well beaten by overall winners Oxfordshire (3.5-0.5) and finished in 3rd overall. All members of the team won at least one game.
The U9s (8 boards) were making their debut in the competition, as last year we simply didn’t have the numbers to raise a team. In that context 3rd overall with a good win over Northamptonshire (5-3) was a pretty decent result and it’s worth noting that the overall winners Warwickshire (who beat us 8-0) have one of the very best U9 teams in the country. Joshua Tang, who will still be U9 next year and was our board 2, had a good 2nd round win and gave the Warwickshire no 2 a very good run for their money in the 1st round, whilst Noor Datoo (board 4) was the only member of the team who registered a win against a strong Oxfordshire team in the last round.
Teams:
U18s: Tom Brown, Ben Raine, Matthew Lo, George Worrow-Goodin, Peter Mottram-Epson, Alastair Mottram-Epson, Sasha Kerbel, Anika Khare, reserves: Rory Haywood, Rakshai Muthusamy
U11s: Daniel Chen, Rakym Serik, Umar Syed, Jason Lv, Austin Meynell, Kareem Patel, Morris Walker, Anant Kapoor, Aryan Ankolekar, Rizwan Riaz (reserve)
U11 Girls: Hope Wheway, Zaara Syed, Lindsay Pyun, Olivia Chen, Hafsa Syed (reserve)
U9s: Evan Miles, Joshua Tang, Alex Cimurs, Noor Datoo, Khaalid Patel, Alex Shen, Arooj Mahajan, Shey Shah-Thakerar, Holly Fowkes, Catherine Lv
Detailed individual results and team crosstables are here
1st – Warks 6pts (19.5)
2nd Leics 4pts (13.5)
3rd Northants 2pts (10.5)
4th Oxon 0pts (4.5)
1st Warks 5pts (16)
2nd Leics 5pts (13)
3rd Oxon 2pts (10)
4th Northants 0pts (9)
1st Oxon 5pts (9.5)
2nd Warks 4pts (8)
3rd Leics 2pts (4.5)
4th Northants 1pt (2)
1st Warks 6pts (21)
2nd Oxon 4pts (12.5)
3rd Leics 2pts (6.5)
4th Northants 0pts (8)