National Championships 2013


As has been the case for the last few years, this year the fate of the title came down to a straight fight between the teams that have domination this competition over the past 20 years, Cambridgeshire and the team who more often than not finish as runners-up, Suffolk.

Saturday
The absence of South Tyneside this year left a 9 team entry, the upshot of which was that each team would have to miss a session each day.

Suffolk and Cambridgeshire took their breaks early on so it took until midway through the first day for the two teams to hit the front, but once they did there was no looking back for either of them.

And while it was clearly a two-way fight there was no doubt that Saturday belonged to Suffolk, an outstanding display saw them drop just 5 of the 48 points on offer.

That performance saw them reach the halfway point of the event with an 11 point lead over Cambridgeshire and 15 points ahead of Essex.

After a slow start Norfolk had pulled themselves up to fourth while Durham were the best of the Northern teams, in fifth place.

Hertfordshire were just ahead of Northumberland while Sunderland had a surprisingly poor day, finishing the first day in eighth place, the last of the teams from the North and only just ahead of last placed Bedfordshire.

Sunday
With a substantial overnight lead many may have thought that Suffolk had it all wrapped up, but that was far from the case and as soon as Sunday's play began their lead started to be eaten into.

A couple of points drifted away from Suffolk in the first session while Cambridgeshire started their day in much stronger form than their rivals. The lead was down to 9 points by the time the two teams met in a session that could have all but settled the title Suffolk's way.

But it was a session that was dominated by Cambridgeshire. They won all three games, in one fell swoop slashing Suffolk's lead to just 3 points and blowing the event wide open once again.

The two teams matched one another point for point over the next two sessions, each waiting for the other to make a slip, which finally happened.

Befordshire had made Suffolk fight for the points as hard as any team on Saturday and now they did so again, taking 2 points off the leaders. And that might have all but killed their points lead, except that Cambridgeshire slipped as well, as an improving Durham team took 2 wins out of 3, allowing Suffolk to edge 5 points clear.

The gap was unaltered going into the penultimate session and it was here that the title was settled. Suffolk took 3 wins against Essex, while Cambridgeshire dropped one game against Norfolk, leaving Suffolk 7 points clear with only 6 to play for, leaving the title finally secured no matter what happened from now on.

Although Cambridgeshire were undoubtedly the better team on Sunday, Suffolk's performance on Saturday had held them in good stead. They finished on 78 points, 7 ahead of Cambridgeshire.

Essex were someway adrift of the top two but were clearly the next best team and were never in danger of losing 3rd place. They finished on 56 points.

Durham had a much better second day, enabling them to leap ahead of Norfolk to finish on 49 points, far and away the best of the Northern teams. Norfolk will had been disappointed to have dropped a spot overnight but they finished in a solid 5th place overall.

But in the end the closest fight of all was for the lower positions. The final 4 teams were covered by just 4 points and while there was little change from their overnight positions it would not have taken much for those positions to have been swapped around.

Hertfordshire managed to hang on to 6th place with 36 points, Sunderland had a better Sunday to raise themselves up a spot, finishing on 34 points, just one ahead of Northumberland who in turn were one ahead of Bedfordshire who, with 20 points on the final day were actually the fifth best team on Sunday.

And so the Cambridgeshire's recent stranglehold on the event was finally broken by Suffolk who took the title for the first time since 2009 and next year will be looking to do what no team other than Cambridgeshire has ever done and retain the title.

You can download a full copy of the results here.

Inter County
The Inter-County title was successfully retained by Suffolk who defeated the Northern Champions, Sunderland, 8-4.

Updated 11th November 2013