#b-side

LBB v Aylesbury B

(20th May 2026)

I’ve made the most of a very agreeable balance of work/time off to play boatloads of tennis lately, which has culminated in a potential three separate matches played in the next 24 hours – it remains to be seen if my arm makes it through all of them, but it has been wicked to get so much court time under my belt. Match #1 was tonight, with the other two due to be played tomorrow:

Tonight was my third match for the B Side, this time paired with Anand. We were presented with plenty of problems to solve, both from our opponents and the windy conditions – with the gusts blowing straight down the court, we had to play very differently at either end!

We started slowly against the first pair (Tom & David) but found our footing and took it in straight sets 6-4, 6-4. Tom had a powerful first serve but wasn’t landing many of them, and his second serve was bordering on pathetic; he handed us plenty of free points and more than one break thanks to his evident lack of confidence in his second serve – if I’d been his teammate, I might have suggested taking some spice off the first one, but I wasn’t, so I didn’t.

Neither Anand nor I played amazingly, but once we’d got our opponents pegged, we did enough. I came in clutch on a few deciding point deuces, particularly in one game following a handful of horror volleys where I made no mistake at the critical moment with an overhead smash, much to my – and Anand’s – relief!

The second pair (Billy & Matt) were unorthodox and therefore trickier to figure out. Billy especially took some getting used to – he was not built for movement but had bundles of power, his serving was good and he seemed happy to tee off on any groundstroke that came his way. In the opening game he sent a few howitzers past us, but it soon became clear that his strike rate could fluctuate wildly, and there were enough rogue shots being sprayed out of the court that we accepted the odd screamer would find its mark.

By the time we’d acclimatised to our opponents, we weren’t quite able to rescue the first set, but with a gameplan in place we came back to draw 3-6, 6-3. No deciding sets in this format, so we ended the night winning 3 out of 4 sets and helping the team to a hard-earned draw. We didn’t play very fluently in either match, but Anand and I agreed it was very satisfying to have solved the puzzles put before us and come away with some good results, especially that final set. I’ve drifted through plenty of matches in the past without thinking clearly about strategy, so it was great having Anand constantly suggesting tactical changeups throughout the evening.