Plenty Of Real Tennis, Including The MCC Club Weekend & “Batting For The Other Side” In The Queen’s Club v Dedanist’s Society Match, Late January & Early February 2023

Brian Sharp presents the Mason Sharp Trophy To The A/B Category Winners at the end of the MCC weekend.

I played plenty of real tennis (and lawn come to that) in January, building up to the MCC Club Weekend, the last weekend of January, an event that I had either steered away from or had cruelly steered away from me until this year. I’m hooked on the idea of playing in it now, though – it was great fun.

Almost everything I want to say about the weekend, including some video links and photos, is in the match report I wrote about the weekend, which you can find by clicking here.

The Queen’s Club v The Dedanist’s Society At Queen’s, 3 February 2023

I have previously described the oddities of Dedanist’s Society matches, with many players being eligible for both teams and often not knowing who they are going to play for until the last minute.

I have previous at this – here’s a report on one in which I represented the MCC against the Dedanist’s, with Carl Snitcher, doyen of The Dedanist’s partnering me for the MCC.

MCC v The Dedanists’ Society, Lord’s, 10 February 2018

…or this one from just before the pandemic, in which I had both an MCC and my Dedanist’s shirt in my bag, as I really had no idea which team I’d end up representing. Carl Snitcher, who was the captain of The Dedanist’s team, ended up playing for the MCC:

Four Courts In 25 Hours; Boston Manor Centre Court, Lord’s Real Tennis Court, Royal Court Theatre & Boston Manor Court One, 8 & 9 February 2020

But I broke yet more new ground in February 2023 in my role in the Queen’s Club match, “batting for the other side”, because I have, in theory, no right whatsoever to represent Queen’s.

Admittedly, I did do some advisory work for Queen’s in the early 1990s, enabling me to enact a fiendish piece of Gamesmanship at that club in the late 1999s…

Lawn Tennis At Queen’s, In Which I Inadvertently Deployed Gamesmanship Masterfully, Yet Still Lost, 24 June 1999

…but I am not a member of Queen’s and not in truth eligible to represent. Further, there were several people listed who were members of both Queen’s and The Dedanist’s. But the timings and handicaps meant that it made sense for me (and one or two other people) to swap sides for this friendliest of friendly fixtures.

I partnered a really pleasant fellow in the first fixture of the day and we did well. I think we set the ball rolling for a Queen’s Club win, but it was hard to tell as we all kept having to look at the schedule to work out which pair was playing for which team.

I think it is fair to say that it REALLY didn’t matter. Nick Browne organised a really enjoyable afternoon and evening – the event was rounded off with a fine meal in the President’s Room – which, as usual, raised money for the Dedanist’s Society’s good causes as well as providing a really good time for us players/attendees.