By Colin Sharples

IF it's not Pyatt, its Pike. Two weeks ago, Carolyn Pyatt scorched the courts with her pugnacious play and last week's matches were similarly characterised by the heavy sound of racket on ball, ball on person, racket on floor, person (twice) on floor.

Lee Sharples and Bernard Millington battered away at Eagley's defences; Egerton felt the blast of Dave Thompson and the Carpetbeaters i.e. his gang of HRM female enforcers, their established ranks of Karen Hunt and Nicky Hamer (each a holder of GBH and bar) now supplemented by Georgina Ryding's awesome appetite for the smash; while the Allsorts v Cricketers encounter was positively nuclear.

Amid all this clatter, Bolton School Bs Jill Pike put on a soothingly consummate performance. It contained, as usual, her trademark impregnable, no-lost cause defence (displayed in some startlingly athletic 'gets'), her easy court coverage and morale-breaking lobs. Most striking, however, was her net play -- quicksilver reactions, incisive interceptions, precise placements.

In this, Mrs Pike was more than ably assisted by Chris Cotton. No rambunctious play from him this week: just a General's role, holding the backline with accurate, good-length driving and some elegant and supple movement which would be welcomed in one much younger even than him. So much did Cotton's confidence in his partner grow, that he let her serve both the seventh and ninth games of their second set. Nobody of course noticed -- least of all Mrs Pike who by now was presumably light-headed with her successes.

Walkers B (league leaders for a whole week until their vertiginous position overcame them) were on the wrong end of this and in particular Mark Gregory who seemed to bear the brunt of the Pike/Cotton assault. Gregory's hefty, flat serve was going in with baffling regularity but while even Cotton's spring-heeled movement was helpless and gave Gregory some joy, it certainly wasn't Pike-proof. Again, Gregory's net play has its better moments but this week he steered many a volley into an apparent gap only to find Mrs Pike, quick of limb and anticipation, filling the void with ease -- despite her slender frame.

To say that Gregory wears his heart on his sleeve would be as much of an understatement as to suggest that he occasionally expresses mild frustration at life's slings and arrows. Indeed, he is one of the game's great racket chuckers and last week's trials saw his bat up and down like a yahoo's yo-yo. His successes are marked with equal gusto, in particular a passing shot threaded through Allan Sharples defences greeted with a roar of triumph and a thoroughly un-Wimbers-like gesture.

In perhaps a calculated gamble, Bolton CC fielded Jason Lee for their match against the Allsorts. Lee can make or break -- and this week he made. He probably generates more raw power than any other Winter League player and he started off like a train: blistering flat serves, tee-off forehands, thunderous smashes -- the drop shot, the feathered pass unknown species. Pair that with the almost equal power of Sandra Birchall whose bazooka backhand is hair-raising even in its wind-up and you have a formidable pairing.

Add in Miss Birchall's well-learned court craft and intelligent choice of shot and opponents have problems. It was therefore to the credit of Ilona Kilburn and Dave Gregory that they came back to draw, having been 4-0 down in what seemed seconds, in a set which saw a standard of hard-hitting, controlled and varied play good as we've seen this winter at least.

That the Cricketers eventually prevailed was due to their overall strength, even Louise Hopkinson as well as providing her usual near flawless display and running young Smith ragged, getting into the spirit of things with several sharp volleys which thudded into the opposition's bodily parts.

She even for good measure gave Mrs Kilburn a couple of smacks with the ball between points.

"Cometh the hour..." but few would have guessed that Eagley's 'messiah' would take the unlikely form of that stalwart steward of the club's fortunes Sean Gallagher. He it was, however, who, not for the first time, stepped up for Division One action and steered his protgs to only their second win. Not least he was able to take some of the pressure off young Roberts.

"Cometh the hour, cometh the woman," this time in the even more unlikely form of one S Gallagher. With Jacky Barlow stricken, his mobile down and not even an Eagley granny available, Gallagher traded track suit for tutu and head scarf and set off to partner Vinny Roohan -- a duo to be pictured only by those not of faint heart and vivid imagination. Restored to his normal Division Three level, Gallagher got murdered -- having in any case declared himself ineligible at having already played that weekend.