THE highlight of the bowls calendar – the WBT world indoor championships, staged, as ever, at Potters Leisure Resort in Norfolk – seems to get earlier every year, and, as if to prove the point, the first bowl of this year’s event was rolled yesterday.
Guernsey’s world-ranked Alison Merrien (pictured) has two chances of glory – having been invited to play in the women’s matchplay singles and the mixed pairs this year – but she will have to wait until Saturday 17 January to get her bid under way.
Curiously, her first matches in both events are scheduled for the same day when she takes on America’s Lorraine Hitchcock in the singles and lines up with the Scots-born England captain Andy Thomson in the mixed pairs.
‘I’m playing someone different from the USA. It will be totally different and we’ll see how the game pans out,’ Merrien said.
‘You’ve got to feel confident going into the championship and take it game for game and see how far you get.’
If Merrien can overcome Hitchcock, she will earn the right to a quarter-final encounter with the defending champion, Ceri Ann Davies, who caused such a stir last year when she won the matchplay and mixed pairs titles and had an impressive run against the world’s top men in the ‘open’ singles.
The Welsh-born Davies, a 29-year-old sports psychologist, was then playing out of Australia, but she has recently moved to Scotland where she is not playing a lot of bowls although she is certain to be determined to retain her titles.
In the quarter-finals of the mixed pairs, Merrien will have an early chance to avenge her defeats over the past two years at the hands of Debbie Stavrou, but the bad news is that Stavrou, from Berkshire, has been teamed up with five-times world indoor singles champion Alex ‘Tattie’ Marshall.
Victory for Merrien and Thomson would set them up for a semi-final clash with Rosa Gandara and Greg Harlow or Sarah Seymour and Mark Royal on Sunday 18 January, followed, with luck, by the final in the afternoon.
Draw for women’s world indoor matchplay championship:
Quarter-finals: Ceri Ann Davies (Scot) v. Lorraine Hitchcock (USA) or Alison Merrien (Gue); Carol Ashby (Scot) v. Julie Saunders (Eng) or Claire Johnston (Scot); Desiree Lambert (NZ) v. Sarah Seymour (Eng) or Rosa Gandara (USA); Debbie Stavrou (Eng) v. Ellen Falkner (Eng) or Carmen Anderson (Australia).
Draw for world indoor mixed pairs matchplay championship:
Quarter-finals: Ceri Ann Davies and David Gourlay v. Carol Ashby and Mervyn King; Lorraine Hitchcock and Jason Greenslade v. Desiree Lambert and Paul Foster; Rosa Gandara and Greg Harlow v. Sarah Seymour and Mark Royal; Debbie Stavrou and Alex Marshall v. Alison Merrien and Andy Thomson.
Article posted on 6th January, 2009 - 2.29pm
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