Riccardo retains Ken Jones May Half-Term Cup
A RISING star from Chandler’s Ford has continued his meteoric ascent through the ranks of the junior snooker game by winning his second successive school holiday competition.
Easter Cup champion Riccardo Drayton retained the Ken Jones May Half-Term Cup by a country mile and recorded a new high break.
The 12-year-old ended the five days of competition at Chandlers Ford Snooker Club 19 points ahead of runner-up Lennon Savage, aged seven.
In fact, until there were just 24 minutes left of the 20 hours of activities, Drayton had won every one of his 24 handicapped snooker matches.
Caden Read celebrated his eighth birthday by finally inflicting the first defeat of the week on the newly-crowned champion.
Drayton, who has been playing competitive snooker for only 17 months and finished runner-up on last season’s Cuestars South of England Under-21 Bronze Tour, increased his highest break to 78 in a match against O’Shay Scott (Eastleigh) on the fourth day.
On the same high-scoring day, Harry Wyatt (Ferndown) knocked in a personal best 19.
And 12-year-old Oliver Sykes (Chandler’s Ford), who had already made the week’s highest snooker break of 91, compiled a record break of 295 at cricket, a game where the bowler pots only reds and the batsman pots only colours.
The much-improved Kostas Ormerod won the round-robin event on the fifth day to claim his first school holiday competition prize.
And a special mention for William Thomson who – on a break of 16 and faced with an easy red and a glorious chance of a first 20 – called a foul on himself. That’s not bad for a lad two days short of his sixth birthday.
The next school holiday competition with World Snooker coach Tim Dunkley is the Rotary Summer Cup, which runs for 29 days from Tuesday, July 24, to Friday, August 31.
Picture by Tim Dunkley
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Tim Dunkley (World Snooker coach)