COUNTY TEAM CHAMPIONSHIP
Newmarket SC - 21st January 2001
The Cleveland team of Lee Lagan, Darren Kell and Mark Hatton, managed to retain the County Cup by defeating Yorkshire in a repeat of last year's final, although they certainly didn't have things all their own way.
With the English Inter-County Championship this year being condensed into a single day's play, the event attracted eleven representative teams to the Newmarket Snooker Club. Taking advantage of the available facilities, all three team members played their games simultaneously over a 60 minutes duration. As usual, the total aggregate score decided the winner.
With Cleveland receiving a bye in the preliminary round, Yorkshire brushed aside the Kent team including an excellent display by Stephen Crosland, who produced six 50+ breaks in a 514-180 result over Chris Carpenter. With Richard Lodge and Gary Rogers also recording comfortable wins the final score of 1122-447 couldn't have been more conclusive. Both of the two entries from Cambridge also fell at this first hurdle, being defeated by Cheshire and Norfolk respectively. Phil Welham (Norfolk) making the first century of the day with 110.
Cleveland were called into action in the next round and had a desperate struggle to overcome the Norfolk team. The key to their success was a spirited recovery by Darren Kell who was at one stage some 70 points behind Fos Wilson, but recovered to win by just over a hundred. This enabled the Champions to progress with a narrow 41 point victory on aggregate.
Yorkshire, meanwhile, had no such drama as they had another impressive 1134-496 win over Middlesex, Gary Rogers producing a century break (101) in his match. The semi-final line-up was completed by Cheshire who had a narrow 14 point win over Cornwall, and Devon who defeated Staffordshire 942-740.
Both Yorkshire and Cleveland managed to overcome their semi-final opposition and progressed to the final, for what seems to be rapidly becoming a traditional meeting. The highlight of the round was a fine break of 240 Lee Lagan for Cleveland, which was the highest of the day. The early running in the final was entirely made by the Yorkshire trio. With just over 10 minutes to go, the tables saw the Yorkshire representatives, Gary Rogers and Richard Lodge each almost 100 points ahead, and their third player, Steve Crosland, some 50 points up on Mark Hatton. At this point the Cleveland team synchronised their effort to perfection and with breaks of 124 (Lagan), 129 (Kell) and 59 (Hatton) regained the initiative, going on to secure an unlikely victory by 104 points. This is now Cleveland's third consecutive success since the event was re-introduced in 1999, but it doesn't appear as though their task is becoming any easier.
