By Ron Fosker

Halstead's William Bettley has become the youngest-ever winner of the junior boys’ singles title at the Braintree Table Tennis League finals.

The 11-year-old was tested by Matthew Laws’ steady solid game but was not afraid to go for his shots on both wings and showed admirable composure to pull back when a game looked like getting away from him.

Bettley also won the cadets’ singles with a victory over his brother Alexander and the two paired up to take the junior doubles.

Alexander took first place in the under-11 singles with youngest brother James runner-up.

Lydia Jackson took the girls’ singles with a victory at 14-12 in the fifth game against last year’s winner Mia Charles.

Veteran campaigner Steve Kerns produced one of the biggest shocks in the recent history of the event when he beat the holder and hot favourite Paul Davison to win the men’s singles.

Davison had won the title five times in six attempts and had never tasted defeat in a final while Kerns had been without a win for ten years.

It is normally Davison who rises to the occasion while Kerns has often failed to produce his best on finals night.

On Sunday that went into reverse.

Kerns’ shots that might have gone off in previous years were finding the table while Davison looked increasingly tentative and careless.

A Davison of past years would surely not have seen two match points slip away as they did in the fourth game here.

He led by two games to one and 10-8, but could not find the killer ball and Kerns pulled back to take the set to a final game, which he won at 11-8.

The shocks were not limited to the final.

After the withdrawal of number two seed Kevin Gowlett and equal third seed Peter Hayden, there was a chance for some of the league’s lower-ranked players to shine and it was expected that semi-final places would be on offer to the two number five seeds whose progress might have been halted by the absentees.

But Scott Dowsett was beaten by his team-mate Simon Webber and Ian Whiteside by Ken Lewis, who became the first player from outside the top division to reach a semi-final since Trevor Vincent in 1976.

Lewis did not make much impression on Kerns in the semi-final, but Webber gave a taste of things to come when he stretched Davison to five games.

For Kerns, though, it was a night of triumph.

Not only did he become the oldest player ever to win the men’s title – his fourth, to place him equal fifth on the all-time list behind Terry Dowsett, Davison, Hayden and Tony Guy – but he added the veterans’ singles, with victory in the final over Whiteside, and the over-50s singles in his first year in that age group, where he beat Steve Pennell.

It was a good night too for Steve Noble, whose unorthodox gently persuasive style brought him the restricted singles, with a final victory over Dave Parker, and the division two singles, where he beat Sean Clift.

Ryan Pitt took the division one singles, with a final win over Lee McHugh, but McHugh, in his first season in the league, took the handicap singles, with a win over Parker in the final.

Charles Wilkinson triumphed in the division three singles with a win over Adam Clift.

Davison’s one consolation came in the men’s doubles, which he and Kevin Gowlett won for the sixth time in seven years.

They beat Pennell and Whiteside in the final.