This away match saw the county heavily defeated by West Midlands with the county scoring 8 points and West Midlands 32 – the county scored 149 shots with West Midlands scoring 231 – this was after a first session win for the county by 6 points to 2.
The match was marred by unacceptable behaviour by the West Midlands players who were involved in loud shouting, sledging and making inappropriate comments. There is little doubt that this affected Worcestershire county players and probably impacted upon overall performance. It was not only Worcestershire’s players who were affected. West Midlands Premier team were playing Northamptonshire at the same venue and the Northamptonshire players were also subjected to unacceptable behaviour. Because of this the Worcestershire and Northamptonshire County Captains will be lodging a formal complaint to the English Short Mat Bowling Association.
Readers of the following report on the county’s performance/results etc.during this match should have due regard to the conditions the county players were subjected to.
The first session was dominated by Worcestershire winning three of the four matches played. Jim Tingle in his singles match led throughout, achieving a narrow 14-11 victory. Johnathon Smith was trailing for much of his singles match, including going into the last end, but achieved a magnificent 3 shots off this last end to win his match 14-13. In the pairs, Pete Forster and Cayman Dredge took 7 shots off the last four ends to win 17-14. At the end of the first session the county were leading 6 points to 2.
The rest of the day’s bowling was disappointing with only one win in the remaining three sessions ( 12 matches ). In the final session of the day Terry Clifford’s fours team were losing 0-7 after four ends but then went on to win six of the remaining seven ends to achieve a well earned victory by 9 shots to 8.
A summary of all the results is shown below :
