We had a record turnout of 77 players in this year’s assessment trials. The event went smoothly, bar an unplanned fire alarm on Sunday afternoon, with all the players excellently behaved throughout. We had a videographer, Shang Mohammad, who livestreamed some of the action via Facebook and Martyn Green interviewed some of the players and coaches at the event.
Cadet Boys
On the following pages of this report, we show the tables and final ranking from each event. In the cadet boys’ event, we enjoyed a standout performance from Woodford Wells 12-year-old, Dhruv Datta, who hadn’t been on the selector’s radar until he won the final top group. Mossford’s Bogdan Voznii, owner of a particularly impressive backhand attack, also played well to come a very close second on countback. Third and fourth place were also very close with Krzysztof Szemro just passing 4th placed Christian Tishkin, again on countback. Louis Green had done ever so well to beat his initial group’s seed, Samuel Knights, over five sets and then win against notable CTTC players Luka Ha and Gil Martins in the filtering bracket to reach the top group. Louis took a game or two against all his opponents in the top group and some of his matches were very close. At only 12 years old, Louis is a player we will be keeping our eye on as he still has two years to play for Essex.
Under 13 Champion
Under 13 Runner up
Under 15 Champion
Under 15 Runner up
In the second group, 11-year-old Charlie Ware impressed. He won all his matches against older boys and came 6th in the event overall. On his way to group 2, Charlie took a game from overall winner, Dhruv and won against the groups highly thought-of seed, Joe Plummer. Joe was severely unlucky actually – he had the unseeded Dhruv and Charlie in his initial group and only just lost to Dhruv 9-11 in the fifth game of their match. Shalen Auckloo came second and Gil Martins third in group 2.
Chelmsford’s Luka Ha didn’t lose a game in group 3. He had done very well to beat second seed Sami Osman in his initial group, but Louis Green knocked him out in the first round of his filtering bracket. Harrison Warner of Woodford Wells came second, Kuzey Musabek third, and Noah Middleton 4th. Kuzey and Noah only decided their match after the 5th set ended 11-7 to Kuzey. Harrison Warner is only 10 years old and his high place in the final ranking, 13th, won him the U11 boys’ trophy.
Under 11 Champion
One of Coach Lee McHugh’s up and coming boys, Sami Osman, found himself in group 4 and won all his matches, but he didn’t have everything his own way. Aryan Pradeep, also of Chelmsford, pushed him to five games as did Teddy Kent of Evolve TTA. Evolve TTA Coaches Kieran Skeggs and Mel Jones attended both days of the trials and were able to give encouragement and advice to their players. As well as Teddy, they also kept a close eye on Archie Wakerly, Benjamin Berwick, and Leo Goodey on Saturday and Hannah Siddalls, Aaron Price, and Jake Nelson on the Sunday. We think we will see a lot of talent emerging from Evolve TTA in the coming years. Joe Plummer didn’t lose a single game in group 5 and his opponents took less than 50 points from him in all their games combined. We note he has another year as a cadet and hope to see him at next year’s trials. His great performance in the lower half of the event means the selectors are keeping him in close consideration. 10-year-old Vivaan Babbar from Paul Sturton’s Buttsbury Club was in this group and came third. We have seen an awful lot of improvement in Vivaan over the last year and have high hopes for his future. Vivaan won the U11 boys’ trophy.
Under 11 Runner up
In group 6, only Tom Verrier could take a set from Ruben Rampat Maunder who won this group with a degree of calmness and an effective attack. Ruben was unlucky not to do even better, he lost in 5 close games to the impressive Ishaan Sethi in the second round of the filtering group. Thomas Yau came last in the group but battled hard, taking Tom and Oli to 5 sets. Billy Andrews came second in the group losing only to Ruben. Tom deserved his third place as he only needed three sets to win against his rival Oli Goodman. Oli had had a very tough first group with Louis Green and Samuel Knights both playing so well. In groups 7 and 8, Toby Smith of Woodford Wells and Benjamin Berwick of Evolve TTA were respective winners. Archie Wakerly earned himself a final ranking of 35th after battling through two five-setters.
Junior Boys
On Sunday morning, all the boys arrived on time and got ready to exit their initial groups in pole position. As trial organisers, Martyn and I try to avoid initial groups where only the winner of each group gets through to the top group but in this case, it couldn’t be avoided. The top seeds would need to play well straight from the off to stand a chance of a good ranking. We had two talented cadets, Callum Heath, and Harrison Hill, in the junior event and so we had
promised that their performance in the junior event would be considered when selecting teams. After the draw, we felt there were two “groups of death”, in group E, Tollgate’s Tom Hinds was seeded but had been drawn with rapidly improving Chelmsford players Luka Ha and Omar Wasi. In group H, Felix Reeve was seeded but as this was the last group, proficient cadet Callum Heath from BATTS had been ‘snaked’ into the group rather than drawn. Felix would have his work cut out!
All the other groups went with their seed and Toby McLewin, Aidan Lees, Joshua Bickles, Harrison Hill, Nikita Tkachuk and Jamie Elliot went to group 1 to play for the highest rankings. In group E, Tom Hinds won his first two games against Omar Wasi 11-7 and 14-12 but then Omar Wasi turned the tables and won the next three 11-8, 11-7 and 11-9 to reach the first group and leave Tom in group 2. In group H, Felix, and Callum both defeated Evolve TTA’s Aaron Price and had to play each other for the privilege of joining the other top juniors. Chelmsford’s Felix played brilliantly to nullify Callum’s formidable attacks and won in just 3 games, 11-8, 11-9 and 11-7. In group 1 we were treated to some truly excellent table tennis. Toby McLewin is an accomplished 18-year-old that has played in the strong Colchester premier division for Tollgate TTC since 2019 giving him a wealth of experience. Josh Bickles quite possibly has the most natural talent of any Essex junior and has been picked for Essex squads for the past two years. Chelmsford’s Harrison Hill is only 12 years old but goes to play in tournaments across the country most weekends. Nikita, also from Chelmsford TTC has started playing in division 1 of the Chelmsford league this year after terrorising division 2 last year. Aidan Lees has devoted himself to improvement and trains with the likes of England #1 U16 Ralph Pattison at BATTS. Jamie Elliot of Buttsbury TTC, Felix Reeve and Omar Wasi have recently joined the ranks of Essex’s best players and any of them can beat anyone in this event.
We started off with Jamie Elliott doing just that – beating Harrison Hill in just 3 games. That was a shock result and spectators wondered whether Jamie might be having a breakout tournament. Then, Nikita Tkachuk managed to beat top seed Toby McLewin – it seemed expected results were going out the window and no-one could predict the eventual ranking. Jamie continued his great start by beating Chelmsford star player, Josh Bickles. Harrison Hill made a quick comeback to beat Aidan Lees. Felix could offer no defence against Toby who looked to have upped his game. Josh frustrated Aidan in just 3 sets with quick blocks to dispatch Aidan’s powerful spins. Toby continued his recovery to beat Harrison in 3 games. Omar Wasi stopped Jamie in his tracks over 5 sets. Josh took Toby to five sets, but Toby kept his cool to eventually win. Harrison managed to win against Nikita in 5 games. Aidan got the better of Jamie allowing him a miserly 14 points in their 3 games. Josh needed all five sets to win against Nikita. The match was so close that Josh scored only three more points than Nikita’s total of 50. Toby was next to take advantage of the waning of Jamie, losing only 16 points in his three-set victory. A couple of matches later, Nikita only allowed Jamie 15 points. Aidan’s form continued to escalate as he achieved a win against Toby, even winning his last two games 11-3, 11-3. Felix played well against Jamie, but Jamie just took the match in a close five-setter (12-14, 11-7, 4-11, 13-11, 11-9). Aidan defeated the rampant Nikita in just three easily won games. In the last match of the group, Harrison and Josh battled it out for second place. It was a close game and Harrison just won by winning the last two games 11-8, 11-8.
Cadet Girls
We were very pleased to see 10 entrants in the cadet girls’ event. Each county championship team must have at least three boys and two girls, so the number of Essex teams we can field are only limited by the number of girls we have available to select. This year, we entered an extra cadet team into the championships and having so many cadet girls playing in this year’s assessment trials gives us hope that next year we might be able to enter a third cadet team – so cadet girls, please keep training hard!
As we had 10 girls and Woodford Wells’ Maisha Patel was ranked higher than the other girls and as she had just finished playing in the Junior Girls event, we decided to put her straight through to a top group while the other cadet girls played in three groups of three players, the winner of each joining Maisha in a final group of four while the second and third players playing in their own groups of three.
Adhuna Das and Grace Liu both play their table tennis for Rowhedge and are lucky enough to receive coaching from county luminaries Rik James and John Andrews. They are getting very good indeed and both won their groups. In the third group, 10-year-old Hannah Siddalls who had travelled all the way to Chelmsford from Southend on a bus won first place and joined Maisha, Adhuna, and Grace. Rayne’s Anmee Chan, and Ruby Gallagher and Lucy Carvell from Clacton formed the second group and Buttsbury’s Freya Hart, who had only just been beaten by Ruby, Melis Chang from the Chelmsford County High School, and Anmee’s sister, Angie Chan made up the third group. Freya played well to calmly win against Melis and Angie to win group 3. Teammates Ruby and Lucy battled it out in an exciting five-set match to decide who would win group 2. Eventually Ruby won the group and ended up ranked 5th in the cadet girl rankings. In the top group, the three 11-year-olds all won against 10-year-old Hannah who had the consolation of lifting the cadet girls U11 trophy! All the games in group 1 were decided quickly in just three sets. Maisha won all her matches, but Grace pushed her hard, scoring 10, 11 and 8 points in her games. Second place would come down to who would win between the Rowhedge friends and training partners, Grace, and Adhuna. It was close and Grace just won, 12-10, 13-11 and 11-6.
Junior Girls
Woodford Well’s Maisha Patel played in both the cadet girls and the junior girls events and impressed in both. Joining her in the junior event was Chelmsford’s top girl, already with experience of playing for Essex, Alesha Ellis-Austin. Ellianna Burridge from Rowhedge also played for Essex last season and was expected to do well. Francesca Hart from Buttsbury has accelerated her development recently and she and her sister, Freya regularly attend Buttsbury coaching sessions. Emily Davison is from Mossford TTC, and no doubt will soon pick up a backhand as sharp as Bogdan Voznii’s from her coach Josh Dye. Lucy Elliot – sister of Jamie – shows a lot of promise. The six girls were ranged against one another in a single group.
Maisha started by winning against Emily in three games. Next, Francesca greatly impressed by achieving an unexpected victory against Essex regular Ellianna. Alesha played her first game against Lucy who had few answers to Alesha’s hard smashes. Francesca was brought down to earth by Maisha in a quick three games. Lucy did well against Ellianna but couldn’t quite keep up in any of their three games. Maisha lost her first game against Lucy but came back in the next three games to take the win. Ellianna pushed Alesha hard, but Alesha unleashed her fearsome attacks and managed to overcome her opponent’s defence over four games. Emily won a game against Francesca and scored plenty of points but, ultimately, Francesca managed to win their match. Neither Alesha nor Maisha had lost a match by the time they played, and Alesha was visibly impressed by her young opponent’s abilities. The games were very close, but Alesha took them 11-8, 12-10, 11-8. Francesca played her second five-setter of the day against teammate and friend, Lucy Elliot and was happy to win out in the end. Ellianna played Maisha in the final game in the group and pulled out all the stops to win 11-9, 11-5 and 13-11. This meant Alesha Ellis-Austin won the junior girls with five wins out of five while Maisha, Ellianna and Francesca went to countback having each won 3 sets. As Elliana had won 5 sets and lost only 3, Maisha had won 3 and lost 3 and Francesca had won 3 and lost 5, Ellianna came second, Maisha third and Francesca fourth, despite all her hard work! The close result was noted by selectors and U17 Girls Winners trophies were awarded to both Ellianna and Francesca.
We would like to thank Gary Copsey for supplying some excellent trophies for the winners and cadet boy runners-up. Gordon Gatheral for giving up his weekend to help us set up the hall, take it down again and for running the hall during the weekend. Thanks to Rik James, Helen Woolnough, Martin Edwards, Christine Edwards, Paul Davison, Kieran Skeggs, Mel Jones, and Paul Nicol for coming to support their players. It was great to see Essex’s coaches in attendance. Thanks especially to Kieran Skeggs, the Essex coach that coaches our premier division teams and who was kind enough to present the trophies. Finally, thanks to Nisha Babbar for doing the registration on the Saturday.
On the following pages you will find the final Essex Assessment Trial rankings, our ideas for the 2023/24 Essex junior and cadet teams, and the event tables. We reserved the right to pick the premier division teams based on our knowledge not only of the players that attended the trials but also players that were unable to attend. This is because the premier divisions are of a very high standard, and we need to consider all of our most competent players. We have decided to almost unreservedly pick players that attended the trials for the teams in other divisions. In this way we hope to show the benefit to players of attending the trials.
Read all the results here.
