Thursday’s penultimate round of the GrowthPoint Jarvis/Kaplan Cup Interprovincial Squash Championships being played in Pretoria didn’t provide too many surprises as the top teams consolidated their positions in the various sections.
The main upset was in the Kaplan Cup, where Western Province women’s A team inflicted a 15-10 defeat on Northerns and in doing so created a unique situation where only four points separate the top four teams, and each has suffered a loss.
In the final round on Friday, top-of-the-log Northerns A (46 points), with Canadian Holly Naughton in the No 1 slot meet SACD A on 43 points. In the other encounter, BizHub Central Gauteng A (45 points) clash with Western Province on 42 points.
In the encounter between SACD A and Western Province in the Jarvis Cup, Paul Coll, the Western Province No 1, again caused an upset when he disposed of world champion Karim Gawad 11-6 11-8 8-11 11-7.
Coll’s teammate, Clinton Leeuw (pictured above), notched a second win for Province when he beat Christo Potgieter in straight games, but SACD, the log leaders, had already sealed victory when JP Brits, Rudi van Niekerk and Jimmy Schlebusch accounted for Rodney Durbach, JP van der Merwe and JOJO Shean respectively.
Lying second on the log, Bizhub Central Gauteng had little difficulty in racing through 20-4 against Midlands, with only one match, that between Gauteng’s captain Devon Hendrikse and Justin Gouweloos, going the full distance to five games, which Hendrikse took 11-6 in the decider.
Free State registered a well-merited 17-10 win over KwaZulu-Natal, where the clash between the No 1’s Ramit Tandon (FS) and Deigo Elias (KZN) provided exciting squash with Elias, ranked 19th in the world, running out the winner at 11-4 in the fifth.
Friday’s schedule is set to provide lots of fireworks.
The men’s A final sees SACD A play Bizhub Central Gauteng A. Ironically, the two provinces which have dominated the competition for the past decade,Western Province A and KwaZulu-Natal, will be playing each other. The loser will be relegated.
Picture of Leeuw in Thursday’s action courtesy of Beandri Potgieter