Cambridge unfortunately lost their first match in this year’s Field Trophy, being knocked out of the competition by Queens in a match reminiscent of their semi-final defeat in the same competition two seasons ago. Cambridge was represented by Duncan Colquhoun, Burak Salgin, Robert Hird, Nick Brown, Hugh Tomlinson, Charles Harcourt and David Mills.

The day started hopefully with Robert pulling off a convincing win over the experienced John Prenn. Robert, playing with such determination and with outstanding retrieving, pressurised John into making many errors, and it was Robert who ended up looking the more experienced! We have another excellent prospect at the University.

Duncan and Charles were evenly matched against a new Queens pairing but failed to make their mark at crucial times towards the end of each set. It seems the time has come for an injection of fresh talent after another disappointing performance from these stalwarts.

In possibly his last match for this side, Burak began in outstanding form and demolished Harry Eddis in the first set. Burak has been very busy with work and his possible lack of practice saw the match turn completely in the second set, Harry well on top. So to the final set, and Burak regained his focus and confidence to storm to a 4-0 lead and surely had done it. No such luck: Harry stopped making errors and Burak could not finish off his determined opponent, not managing to win another game. Thanks from us all to Burak for his enthusiasm, availability whenever required, and for all those nail-biting times watching him play. We’ll miss you.

So we now had to win the final two matches, and first it fell to Nick to try and upset the much lower handicapped Tom Seymour-Mead. The first set saw Nick fight back from 5-3 down to take it 6-5. He had taken a lot out of himself, and it was Tom who now took control. Despite good efforts to fight his way back in, Nick was unable to disturb Tom’s composure and both Nick’s result and that of the team were decided. Nick has landed himself with very demanding fatherly commitments and has not played that much recently, but he is another prospect who will surely improve with more experience.

Our final pairing of Hugh and David proved too strong for the Queens pair. How we had hoped the result would be decided by the final match as this is such a good doubles partnership.

Results