Australia gave an excellent display of squash rackets to overwhelm Canterbury, 4-0, at QEII Park last evening, but the local side was far from disgraced.
No Canterbury players gave up without a fight but it was the province’s top junior, Rod Hayes, who was the most impressive, in going down two games to three.
Hayes showed great resilience in the first game against Terry Cheetham, the youngest of the Australians, by coming back from 2-8 to level at 8-8 after some breathtaking rallies, but he was unable to take the two more points necessary to win the game.
He took the second game quite comfortably, 9-4, after a shaky start when the serve changes hands eight times before the first point was scored, and showed lovely touch in the latter part of the next game to gain a 2-1 lead.
The fourth game was marked by one glorious Hayes backhand winner but he was starting to tire and only managed to win service three times, failing to win a single point. He improved slightly in the final game but not sufficiently to threaten the Australian, who was making some incredible returns from the backhand corner with his arm at full stretch.
Barry McNeil started very badly against the left-handed Kevin Shawcross and lost the first game 1-9, but from then on he produced better squash, mixing his shots instead of trying to demolish the ball at every opportunity.
Shawcross was a rather amazing player. He looked awkward and appeared on the surface to be adopting a very casual approach to the game, but he turned out to be very flexible, playing his shots with the confidence of a chess player who knows he can win in a certain number of moves.
The Austalian captain, Ray Lewis, was far too good for the Canterbury No.1, Viv Hargreaves. Hargreaves did some valiant retieveing- in one long rally he returned the ball with back-wall boasts twice in succession – but the Australian had a superior array of shots.
Lawrence Skurr was able to win only a total of five points in his match against a balding John Manning.
Results (Australian names first)
R Lewis beat V. Hargreaves 9-6 9-4 9-1; K Shawcross beat I. B. McNeil 9-1 4-9 9-5 9-4; T Cheetham beat R Hayes 10-8 4-9 9-0 9-2; J Manning beat L Skurr 9-2 9-3 9-0.
