Guernsey Press

Three wins out of four for Sarnians

LIANNA BICHARD and Daniel de la Mare have hit back after a disappointing first day to record good wins in the World Indoor Bowls Council under 25 singles championships at the Grainville stadium in Jersey.

Published

LIANNA BICHARD and Daniel de la Mare have hit back after a disappointing first day to record good wins in the World Indoor Bowls Council under 25 singles championships at the Grainville stadium in Jersey. While Bichard managed a strong straight sets win against the Malaysian Erda Firdayu Saroji, de la Mare excelled himself with two impressive scalps - beating the defending champion Simon Jones, and world outdoor gold medallist Ryan Bester.

Although she lost in straight sets last night to Ireland's Catherine Beattie, Bichard, who has three more group games to play, has kept herself in with a chance of making it through to the knockout stage.

But it was de la Mare who came through the Lion's Den to beat Jones, 5-5, 9-2, and Bester, 6-5, 3-5, 2-1, who captured everyone's imagination, putting his opening defeat at the hands of Manx teenager Edward Alderson firmly behind him.

Against the holder, de la Mare opened strongly, scoring five shots in three ends before Jones, from Bracknell, applied himself diligently to scoring the same number of shots over the next four ends to tie the set, 5-5.

Although he must have been very disappointed to see his early lead disappear, the Guernseyman got his head down in the second set and controlled matters from start to finish against the England star.

De la Mare played well in the first set against the Cana-dian, scoring on five of the seven ends, but almost lost the set when he dropped a full house of four shots on the fifth.

Shots were hard to come by in the second set when six ends yielded singles, but Bester looked as if he might be on a run when he won the set and opened his account in the tiebreak.

However, the 18-year-old IT assistant from the Castel, bounced back to take the next two ends for a famous victory that well and truly kept him in the hunt for top honours.

De la Mare's next opponent will be Welsh star Andrew Hopkins, after which he is lined up to play Jersey's John Lowery and Scotl-and's Wayne Hogg, who has established himself as one of the favourites for the title.

Bichard showed character after dropping the first three shots against the Malaysian, but compiled a winning sequence of seven shots without reply to win the first set, then came back from 1-3 to win the second 9-3.

Against Beattie, the Guernsey player was restricted to two singles in the first set, but was always in the hunt in the second until the Irish star scored a double on the penultimate end to lead 6-3.

This left Bichard looking for four shots, because a tied set was no good to her and she had to settle for a single.

Today, she takes on Tiffany Law from Hong Kong and Hannah Evans from Wales, before completing her programme against the in-form Scot, Lynsey Nisbet.

Sorry, we are not accepting comments on this article.