LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

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THE VIEWS EXPRESSED ON THIS PAGE ARE TOTALLY THOSE OF THE WRITER OF THE LETTER(S) AND NOT IN ANY WAY THE VIEW OF EITHER JOHN BOWNESS OR THE LEICESTER AND DISTRICT TABLE TENNIS LEAGUE.

The Editor reserves the right to edit where necessary.   

COUNTY RANKINGS

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John

Can someone please explain the basis of the County Rankings that are shown on Topspin. Whilst I understand that the gradings of players in the L&DTL will not follow them exactly, there seems to be some discrepancy especially within the veterans.

Thanks

Steve Pratt

Abbots Rd

<<<<< IN REPLY TO THE LETTER ON THE LEFT

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A short explanation of County Rankings

In reply to an open letter from Steve Pratt, I thought I would explain a little about how we rank players for the county.

Just before each season starts (When the new ‘gradings’ are made available), the county team captains come together to discuss the rankings for the coming season.

There are several factors that are taken into account:

- Grading

- National Ranking

- Previous county performance

- Current and potential ‘form’

- Our knowledge of the players

- Availability (Some players do not want to play)

- Other factors (A bit obscure I know)

It is not an exact science and there can be ‘disputes’ within the meeting.

If we take the Vets Mens’ ranking list as an example, it pretty much follows the Gradings with a couple of exceptions.

We decided to move Abraham Conteh down the list as he hasn’t played for some time and so we would expect his current form to be well below his grading. Should he start playing and perform well, we would expect to rank him more in accordance to his grading figure.

Also, we decided to rank Reza Kiani higher than his grading would suggest based upon our knowledge of how he performs in county matches and the ‘inside’ knowledge that he’d tried a new bat last season that hadn’t worked out and was back to his best with his previous bat. Although, to be honest, it was the ‘previous county performances’ that was the clincher and I, personally, wasn’t overly happy with the ‘bat’ reason. As it happens, I believe his results to date are confirming our collective decision.

A couple of examples from the Snr Mens’ ranking list would be Jared Patel and Luke Greenfield. Last season we could possibly have ranked Jared at No1, but we ranked him at no2. It was a close-call, but we erred on the side of caution. This year, we know more about him and he is ranked at no1. The same reasoning is why, this year, Luke is ranked behind Jack Rogers.

You may notice that towards the end of the Snr Mens’ and Snr Womens’ rankings, we have included a few youngsters. This is purely to offer encouragement and the respective Snr county teams would not be expected to ‘play’ them.

Finally, right at the end of the Mens’ rankings, we ‘auto include’ (hence the asterisk) a player that we know will be at the venue where matches are being played. This ensures that if there is a circumstance where we are short of a player (an injury or no-show?) and we can’t get a higher ranked player as replacement, the team can field a full compliment of players and we won’t get fined! They must to be ‘ranked’ in order to play.

So, we certainly do not blindly follow the gradings or the national rankings. We collectively produce the rankings but hope to not make any glaring mistakes. As I said before, it certainly is NOT an exact science!

Andy LeButt (Chair of Selectors).