| LSE
REACHES SEMI-FINAL!
Report
from Alpesh
The 2010 Midlands Snooker Cup, the annual pre-BUCS
warm up, was held at Riley’s in Coventry on 6-7th February.
The event included both individual and team events, with 1st team’s
playing in the Championship and 2nd & 3rd teams playing in the
Shield.
The event began with the Individual Championships,
with LSE’s snooker superstar Zhaolin Li up against some typically
geeky looking opponent from Oxford. Zhaolin dispatched his opponent
with ease and unfortunately found himself in the next round against
the reigning champion and No.1 seed, Jay Murphy. The match was a
high quality affair, and ended up on a nerve-racking deciding frame,
Zhaolin’s almost robotic temperament and piston-like cue action
earned him a well made break of 34, giving him a vital 30 point
lead and a great chance to cause a major upset by knocking out the
favourite. Jay Murphy’s quality saw him claw back the difference
and the final frame went right down to a black ball game. After
an exchange of safety, Zhaolin unfortunately left Jay a shot at
the black, and he gladly took it to end a thrilling match. The current
holder of LSE tournament titles in every cuesport discipline, Aqeel
Kadri was drawn against the Imperial captain. Aqeel started the
match with a bang, keeping the cueball on a string in the opening
frame and with the help of a contribution of 30, went 1-0 up. His
opponent came back strongly in the next frame, knocking in a solid
break of 44 to take the game to a decider. A scrappy final frame
followed, which Aqeel lost, making it a disappointing end after
such a bright start. Alpesh Varsani, Ken Nguyen and Will Dee all
came up against solid opponents and were also knocked out in the
1st round.
In the Team Championship, LSE had a frighteningly
tough group, Manchester 1st, Nottingham 1st, and the dream-team
of Warwick 1st. Having been thrashed relentlessly in last year’s
team event by Warwick and Nottingham, we did not arrive to the tournament
with any major expectations. In fact, on the drive up to the tournament
we made sure to brush up on our mental arithmetic, we needed to
be sure that our competence in counting our opponents’ onslaught
of breaks made up for our lack of it on the baize. Our first game
was against the daunting line up of Warwick. LSE captain Alpesh
Varsani conjured up a cunning game plan, this was to try and win
at least 1 frame out of 10, to avoid the embarrassment of a whitewash.
However, this game plan proved to be overly ambitious and we were
cleanly dispatched 10-0. Having seen the 10-0 score line, Manchester
and Nottingham were licking their lips in anticipation of giving
us a good thrashing. Little did they know what was about to hit
them.
After a short break wandering around the slums of
Coventry’s city centre, which logically had a giant Primark
as the centre of attention, we came back to play Manchester 1st.
Given that Manchester had beaten Warwick in the UPC 9-Ball Championship
semi-final, we knew we were in for another tough battle. It seemed
that the inspirational sights of Coventry’s city centre instilled
a new life of self belief into our minds as LSE raced to a 6-0 lead,
with Aqeel, Alpesh and Zhaolin all winning their matches 2-0. For
the first time ever, the Manchester camp was silenced. LSE ended
up winning the match 6-4, giving us a much needed boost and a real
chance of progressing through the group stages, a feat that we could
not have dreamed of achieving at the outset. Our final game was
against Nottingham, a 7-3 or better score line in LSE’s favour
would see us into the semi-finals in 2nd place, any win for Nottingham
would put them through, so there was everything on the line for
both teams. Nottingham began the match fully confident that they
will easily wipe the floor with us. As the game got under way, several
Nottingham players displayed their inability to count from 1 to
30, causing disputes about break sizes and frame scores. Naturally,
the lack of mathematical prowess in our opponents inflated the LSE
investment banker ego and we annihilated Nottingham 9-1. The look
on the face of the Nottingham team was priceless. LSE’s Will
Dee, who has not won a single frame at the Midlands Cup in 2 years,
managed not only to get his first frame on the board, but also to
register a win. Never before has so much been achieved in one match.
In the semi-final, we played the winner of the other
group, Cardiff, whilst Warwick and York played out the other semi-final.
At this point we realised just how big our achievement was, as we
were now in battle with the elite teams in the university snooker
scene. Unfortunately, Cardiff were far too strong for us, beating
us 8-2, with Alpesh Varsani winning the only 2 frames for LSE. The
counting practice on the drive up paid off as a Cardiff player,
known as ‘The Carpenter’ knocked in a mesmerising clearance
to the pink of 64 against Ken, who spent the majority of his match
fetching colours from the pockets.
LSE has definitely stamped its authority in university
cuesport circles, a semi final in the Midlands Cup this year following
a superb run of medals in all BUCS events last year, including the
8ball Team Shield final, shows that we are a rapidly improving unit
and are real contenders for medals in the coming BUCS events.
|
|
Team
frame stats
Alpesh: 5/8
Rob: 4/8
Will:
2/8
Ken: 2/8
Aqeel:
4/8
High
Breaks
Rob: 34
Aqeel: 30, 27
Ken: 29
|
