No Match for An OAP

As the court was so cold the ball was slow but Kieran wasn’t. In the knock-up he moved well and powered the ball round the court. Hold on a minute, I thought, this guy has just lost his league match to the chap I beat last week… so no panic. Spinning the racket he asked ‘left or right?’… ‘left,’ I said… and he won the right to serve.

He served hard and - did I say he moved well? - bit of an understatement, he had the speed of youth which, against the canny experience of age, started to tell. I tried the usual trick of shouting ‘Oh, good shot’ whenever he crashed a ball past or feinted and dropped the ball on the front wall. That didn’t help any more than my stream of abuse when my ‘easy winners’ hit the tin and became losers.

So, soon lusty Kieran was winning by two games to love. There was no love in my heart, and with my gamesmanship having no effect I did think of panicking as the score in the third game hovered around three all. Change the game, gotta throw him…so aimed a lob serve and got a point. Ignore the back and the elbow pain, hammer the next rally and move was my ploy - and it worked. Lusty Kieran became flustered Kieran, and he started to tin a few and, lo and behold, it was two one.

Gamesmanship is important; although I was knackered at this point I did my usual thing of pretending I wasn’t by just roaming the court whilst Kieran grabbed the water bottle and towelled down.

“Ready,” I said, when he wasn’t, and so …with bang, crash for one point and slowly- slowly-catchheee-Kieranee… (you know what happened, don’t you)…yes! the Old Age Pensioner prevailed, and then promptly collapsed in the changing room - leaving Kieran to go on chatting up the feisty one……

RJA