While not the most popular sport to play, many spectators came to watch the doubles matches on Saturday morning. Each of the top three seeded pairs for the Women’s and Open categories played each of the top three pairs from the other side, which meant that there were a total of nine Women’s matches and nine Open matches.
Women’s Doubles: York 1s vs Lancaster 2s
The match started with both teams drawing, winning one game each. In the third game, scores were still roughly even, as York would quickly catch up every time Lancaster crept ahead.
York started to pull ahead to 11-13. One of the women from York dived to the floor trying to hit the shuttlecock, but she accidentally hit it out of play, giving Lancaster the point. Towards the end, Lancaster started to catch up again, and the race to 21 points continued. At this point, everything was still to play for and the match could have gone either way.
In general, Lancaster’s players were good at hitting the really high overhead shots with a lot of force, but York typically had more precision with their aim.
Lancaster concluded the match by hitting the shuttle out, giving York the final point and taking them to win 18-21.
After the match, York Vision interviewed Ingrid Ghosh, one of the York players, to ask her what she’s thinking about tactically as she’s playing.
She answered, “just really trying to look for spaces, move around, focus, communicate with my partner”
“You need to be aware of where your partner is the whole time. The most important thing is trusting your partner to do their job and cover their shots”.
“We keep fumbling some of our shots which we really should be able to do, so we’re going to try and clean up our game; also just same as we try and do at the beginning of every game, just try and work out what their weaknesses are, what their strengths are and just work around that”.
Open Doubles: York 3s vs Lancaster 2s
For the first half of the final game in this match, Lancaster were a point or two ahead of York. They played started at a steady pace, although Lancaster’s lead increased to 8-15 when both teams started making serves with more power. At this point Lancaster tried a powerful smash, hitting the shuttle with lots of force in attempt to give York little time to react. Despite their efforts, York handled the tricky shot well, quickly leading to Lancaster conceding a point.
Near the end, York clung on to the match by earning a few points, but Lancaster ultimately won thanks to a poor serve from Rueben Gedge, winning 21-13 in a break from York’s recent dominance in the event since 2019.
Jasper Preston, who played in the Lancaster Open 2nd team, said that “when you play different pairings, it takes time to get accustomed to play styles, different to anticipate shots, […] but there was no point when we didn’t feel in control, and it worked out well.”