Ken Wheeler Shield

A Close Win for Bedfordshire

A triumphant win for the Bedfordshire team who are this year’s Ken Wheeler Shield winners. It was staged at the Wrest Park club and attracted entries from four counties, Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire, Cambridgeshire & Norfolk. Played in almost tropical conditions with the temperature reaching the low 80F, play was keen and competitive and on the fast running lawns at times a little tricky.

Hertfordshire set the pace, and by the end of the fourth round set up a commanding lead of 8 game points closely followed by Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire on 6 points and Norfolk on 4 points. However, Herts let this lead slip in round five by not winning a single game, allowing the opposition to close the gap so that at the end of the round there were three teams on 8 match points with Norfolk trailing on four points. Round six the overall position changed again in that Beds picked up 3 match points to take the lead with a total of 11 points, with both Herts and Cambs on 10 and Norfolk trailing with 5, which meant that at this stage Norfolk were eliminated and the other 3 teams proceeded on to the Gold Medal Round.

In the Gold Medal round the final result went down to the wire when with Beds and Herts having finished their games with a win apiece, it meant that the remaining game result between Geoff Johnson & Andre Machell (Herts) against Terrey Sparks & Chris Van Essen (Cambs) would determine the overall result. If Herts won then they would equal Beds total points and a play-off would be required. If Cambs won then Beds would be triumphant. In the end Cambs ran out the winners 7-5, meaning Beds had 14 match points to both Herts and Cambs on 13 match points.

George Collin the groundsman of the host club and who is also the E.A.C.F. Chairman was on hand to present the trophy, and complemented the teams on their high standard of play.

Also a special thanks to Nick Archer who was present for some lawn practice and found himself purloined into keeping the scores as unfortunately his brother Robert was not able to attend.

Finally, special thanks to the Wrest Park Club for making their excellent facilities available to the Federation for this event which is gaining popularity as it goes on.

Report & photo by Terrey Sparks