The Virgin Atlantic Sadili Tour 2011 reach its peak today, after a series of wins at three events of school meets, with Kenya’s defending tennis champions, Malezi School, today met their match at Millfield School, where they played their national counterparts in both doubles and singles for the first round of a two-day series, which was played to Millfield’s very well maintained grass courts.
Amadi Kagoma (Number 1) lost both his singles to player 1 and player 3 of Millfied, (6-1) and (6-1) respectively. Richard Ooko Onyango (Number 2) also lost both his singles to player 2 (6-0) and player 5 (6-2). Jamin Luvembe won his first singles against player 3 (6-0), but lost his second singles to 2-6 to player 4 of Millfield. Henry Ayesiga held his own, winning both his singles 6-0 and 6-3 to give Malezi much needed points. In the doubles, Amadi/Luvembe won against Millfield’s first pair 6-4 in a very closely contested match, before an enthusiastic tennis players and coaches. The final scores in matches were 6 – 4 to Millfield. International professional, Dr. Liz Odera, who accompanied the team commented, "this is the level of challenge that we must constantly seek to build our team, I am confident that, after playing on grass against some of the best juniors in England, we can only get better."
Matchplay continues tomorrow, Friday, on hard court, where Malezi hopes to gain the advantage, should the weather hold. Millfield remains the only team to seriously challenge Malezi on this Virgin Atlantic-sponsored tour. Malezi Boys, who has successfully won against Oundle, Haileybury and Wess Cathedral Schools with relative ease, and is seeking to begin her campaign for yet another national boys’ title in July 2011.
