It was Hatfield’s turn to host the 2024 East Anglia Cup on the penultimate weekend of June. Sadly Hatfield were without a team which at least guaranteed the string of Home Club victories would end at 5. CURTC’s team set out for the 8:26 train to Hatfield except for Charles (first up at 9:50) who noted he’d take the earlier train just ‘to be sure’. And how right he was, as on arriving at the station, the 8:26am was nowhere to be seen as the inbound train had failed to get beyond Letchworth.

Ben and Miles find a train

also en route

Fortunately there were alternatives and we arrived just in time to see Charles turning the tide against his formidable Newmarket opponent, who’d (fortunately) had an 8+ point handicap reduction earlier in the week. Our Doubles pairing made every attempt to not win but ultimately failed and won 8-7. Miles kept going and completed the sweep. Next up was Prested and again Charles got us off to an excellent start so if we could just win one of the next two matches the cup would be making the return journey on Network Rail. However in more or less identical fashion we came agonisingly short in both. The buzzer (40 mins) went with the both match scores tied in games and Cambridge down the Hazard end and unable to complete the sudden death penalty shoot out/super over to our satisfaction.

Go Newmarket! Charles, Ben & Miles do their best

Arghhh… +8 wins it!

So we were reduced to cheering on Newmarket in their battle with Prested in the final match. Our cheering did not have desired effect in the first two matches but if Newmarket could win the last, the overall result would go to a games countback… Jon Fistein (Newmarket) and Josh Pike (Prested) played the match of the day which was finally edged by Jon 8/7. So out came the calculators to find that (unfortunately) Prested were three games to the good. So congratulations to them and Robin Mace from Hatfield for his superb organisation of a great day of tennis (and lunch).