Tuesday evening the EC started with a match against Iceland. Only the woman singles was won by Iceland so the final score was 4-1 for the Netherlands. A good result! I did not play myself, but against Lithuania I had to play the men’s doubles match.
The match against Lithuania did not start as well as we had hoped for. Dave and Samantha played a match against themselves and that was a shame to see. It just was not their day and we were 0-1 behind. Patty came on court against Akvile in the woman singles. They are playing quite often against each other because Akvile is playing in the Dutch league. Patty took the first game easily but lost focus in the second, so a third game had to be played. The final game was won by Patty and we were all very happy about that fact: 1-1. Saber was up against Kestutis and the difference of strength of playing badminton was clear to see. He simply could not keep up: 1-2. The ladies doubles played by Iris and Selena came on court and they won the first game easily. In the second game things started to be more tight but eventually they took home the final score of 21-19: 2-2. In advance I had not expect to play the deciding match during my 18th interland, but I was ready for it. Luckily I managed to give a peptalk to Dave and it worked out. During the match it became clear that we would not get troubles playing our opponents. Within 20 minutes the match was over: 21-11 and 21-8. Final score: 3-2 for our team!
From the very first point until the last one we encouraged our teammates who were playing on court by yelling and it helped. We can be proud about the fact that we stayed very positive during the whole interland even though the first match was lost unexpectedly. It is a shame that there are always the same people who are grumbling…but anyway we are used to that by now. Tonight we are going to play very well to end 1st in our group and I have faith in that!