Cromer Squash Club hold four internal tournaments during the course of a season and the last one of these, the annual handicap tournament, traditionally takes place in the spring of each year just before the winter season of matches draws to an end.

The first tournament was held in 1981 and since then, apart from two years early in the millennium and again in 2021 because of Covid, players of all abilities have taken to the courts each year in a bid to lift the prestigious trophy which was originally presented by The Gateway Building Society.

The beauty of the handicap tournament is that players of all abilities, in theory at least, have an equal chance of lifting the trophy but this year it was two of the lower handicap players, both regular members of the club’s high-flying Norfolk League team, Henry Geaves (-8) and Ben Herrieven (-5) who fought their way through to the final.

Geaves was bidding to win the tournament for the first time but Herrieven is a seasoned campaigner having previously got his name on the honours board 16 years ago when he was the 2007 champion as well as twice going on to win the club championship itself in 2012 and 2014

Under the handicapping system Herrieven went into each game with a two-point lead but in the first game this proved irrelevant as Geaves soon pulled the handicap back to lead 5-2 and 10-4 before closing out the game 15-7.

The second game, however, followed a completely different pattern as Herrieven led 5-2 and 9-5 before a run of five successive rallies enabled him to take the game 15-7 and draw level at 1-1.

With the match evenly balanced the large crowd on the balcony sensed that the third game could prove decisive as Herrievn roared into a 10-3 lead.

However he had to work hard for those points and although he went further ahead at 13-7 he was pleased to be able to take a breather as he just did enough to win the game 15-11.

The fourth game was very much one-way traffic as Geaves took it 15-5 against a visibly tiring Herrieven and then in a remarkable fifth game Geaves came from 2-8 down to win thirteen successive points to win the game 15-8 and the match 3-2 to become the 30 second different player to win the tournament.

In the semi-finals both players had been involved in five game “thrillers” the previous evening. Herrieven had beaten another former champion, Henri Paul 3-2 while Geaves had to come back from 7-12 down in the fifth to beat the reigning champion Richard Keeble 3-2

Trophies were presented to the two finalists by CLTSA Chairman, Kelvin Van Hasselt who said it was a pleasure to watch such an entertaining final after a hard week’s squash while Geaves said: “All credit to Ben. When I trailed 8-2 in the final game I thought I was beaten but I managed to dig in for the second match in succession” and Herrieven said: “after two hard matches and a Norfolk League match on Tuesday this was one match too far and Henry overpowered me in the last two games.