North Shore thrashes Canty in badminton

Press, 24 July 1987, Page 34

North Shore thrashes Canty in badminton

By

MALCOLM CONDIE

North Shore’s Wisden Cup badminton team thrashed a slow Canterbury side in the second day of play at the Skellerup Hall yesterday, walking away with all 16 games against the home side.

Only two games went to three sets and they were both in the men’s singles. Prasanna Gulasekharem was looking strong as he went to the third set with North Shore’s Kerrin Harrison, but the North Islander easily won the deciding game. Canterbury’s other top men’s player, Greg Bray, took the former Christ-

church resident, Shaun Tetai, to three sets also, but could not find the hole in Tetai’s play to finish off the game. Both players were vocal during the match and obviously on edge as match point approached. In at least half of Canterbury’s games, the home team’s scores did not reach 10 points, and games where the home side’s score did not even clock up five points were not uncommon.

Some blame for the whitewash may rest on the brilliant effort by Canterbury on Wednesday evening when it beat Waitemata, 10-6. The win took five hours to achieve

and ended at 12.30 yesterday morning, resulting in some of the players losing sleep. North Shore, however, put on a near faultless display of consistent badminton with a particularly good performance from its No. 1 seed, Katrina Lockey, who displayed good shuttle control on attack and defence from anywhere in the court.

Lockey combined in the mixed doubles with Harrison, and will prove a tough match for North Shore’s remaining opponents.

Auckland I beat Waitemata, 14-2, and with both the men’s and women’s

national badminton champions will be a strong force to be reckoned with in later games. Waitemata still has to win a round, as does Auckland 11, which failed against Hutt Valley, 11-5.

Today's Wisden Cup matches are:

Morning: Auckland I v Canterbury, North v Waitemata, and Auckland II v Canterbury.

7 p.m.: Auckland I v Hutt Valley, North Shore v Waitemata and Auckland II v Canterbury.

In the Slazenger Cup tournament yesterday Counties beat North Shore 11, 14-2; Southland beat Auckland 111, 10-6; and Wellington beat Waikato, 13-3. £■