UCL Are Top Of The Class

UCL Are Top Of The Class

26/10/26: Aadi Agarwal & Muhammad Hurzuk won UCL's first men's universities title since 2020 at Eton on Saturday, defeating Warwick's Tanish Arjaria & Dan Hurst in the final.

This year's entry was similar to last year's, with 15 pairs making it to Eton. Cambridge brought five pairs and looked in good fettle; Oxford by contrast only had three, with several of their top players missing and their captain lying on a beach in Spain somewhere. UCL, Bath, Warwick and Loughborough were all there with strong pairs, there was a joint UCL/Imperial London collaboration and hybrid pairs representing Manchester/Warwick and Exeter/Surrey. One of the fun things about the Universities tournament is that it throws together players who played at rival schools and there was representation from a wide range of Fives backgrounds this year, including St.Olave's, Aldenham, QEB, Westway, Mill Hill, Highgate, Shrewsbury, Eton, Repton, Harrow, Westminster, Berkhamsted and City of London, as well as several players who learned their Fives out of the traditional school system.

The 15 pairs were divided into three groups of five, with the top three progressing to the quarter-finals or a play-off to make the quarter-finals at least. Old Olavian Aadi Agarwal had won the trophy last year in a London pairing; this time he was representing UCL alongside QE Barnet's Muhammad Hurzuk. They were a bit slow to get going in Group A, conceding 8 points to the Cambridge 2 Eton/Harrow combination of James Grant-Peterkin (back at Cambridge for a Masters 25 years after last representing the University in the 2001 Varsity Match) & Tony Shi and coming within a whisker of losing to the impressive London pairing of QEB's Zayn Phoplankar from Imperial and Cholmeleian Joel Abramovich from UCL, back on court for the first time in nine years. UCL just about made it through in first place eventually, though, with London second, Cambridge 2 third and Warwick/Manchester (two more Elizabethans in Anas Bocus and Dinuk Dissanayake) and Oxford 3 heading into the Plate.

Aadi's old school partner Tanish Arjaria was back again for Warwick, having lost in the final last year and also had a new partner in Etonian Dan Hurst, a familiar opponent from their school Fives careers. They had a rather more untroubled passage through Group B, with Cambridge captain Giles Holliday and partner George Lythgoe taking the second place slot and Loughborough's Westway/Mill Hill duo of Dylan Clarke & Dhruv Jain coming third and heading into a play-off ahead of Oxford 2 and Cambridge 4.

The final group saw Bath (Olavian Alex Sapozhenko & Reptonian Henry Barton-Smith) and Oxford 1 (Lewis Drummond & Cholmeleian Miles Wijeyeratne) facing off for top spot, although Cambridge 3 (Yash Kedia & Mark Ludden) pushed both pretty close before losing out on the play-off spot to Exeter's Frankie Manderson-Harkin & Surrey's Indrajit Datta in the final round of games, with Cambridge 5 setting their sights on the Plate. It's fair to say that Alex took a while to get going first up but by the time the Bath pair got to the group decider they were moving up the gears and came through 12-7 winners.

Exeter/Surrey continued their good form to win the play-off against Loughborough and take the final quarter-final spot, but that was as good as it got for Frankie & Indy and their run was ended in the Last Eight, with Aadi & Muhammad beginning to look more like potential winners than they had in the morning. Tanish & Dan continued to win comfortably against Cambridge 2, Bath made it past the tough challenge of UCL/Imperial and Oxford 1 completed the semi-final line-up with a convincing 15-8 victory over their Light Blue rivals.

The semi-finals were best of three games with no setting and the UCL pair were now hitting their stride, combining well and cruising past Oxford 1 12-3, 12-8. The Bath v Warwick match was a lot tighter but Warwick always had their noses in front, winning the first game to 8 then establishing a 10-5 lead in the second. Bath weren't finished, though, and came back strongly to try and take the match to a decider, but Tanish & Dan hung on to win 12-10 and take their place in the final.

Going into the final, it felt as though UCL had overcome their early wobbles and were beginning to hit top gear, while Warwick were just tiring slightly after setting the standards earlier in the day. This time it was best of three with setting and the first game was tight throughout, all four players playing some fine Fives and UCL taking the brave call to go for sudden death at 10-10 when cutting; it turned out to be a good call as Muhammad produced the cut they needed and they went on to clinch the first game 12-10. This proved to be crucial: Dan - in only his second outing on a Fives court in three years - finally began to feel the effects of a full day of playing and the high standard he had been setting began to drop slightly. Aadi & Muhammad, buoyed by their victory in the first game, sensed an opportunity and seized it ruthlessly, racing ahead at the start of the second game and then closing it out quickly to take the title, a first for UCL since Joe Marks & Sahil Shah won in 2020 and a second successive non-Oxbridge win.

There were of course plenty of plates to keep everyone else occupied throughout the afternoon, with Cambridge 1 deservedly winning the quarter-finalists plate to finish fifth and Cambridge 3 finishing strongly to take Plate A ahead of Loughborough. Plate B came within one point of being a complete threeway tie, with two 12-11 and one 12-10 result and all three pairs winning one and losing one, Oxford 3 (Sacha Hunter & Harper Katz) winning out by the smallest of margins.

Thanks to Eton for hosting the tournament, to the Jesters for their sponsorship, which covers travel costs and without which the tournament would be a lot smaller and to all of the players who made it such an enjoyable day.

Play-Off Round

Exeter/Surrey (F.Manderson-Harkin & I.Datta) beat Loughborough (D.Clarke & D.Jain) 12-3

Quarter-Finals

UCL (A.Agarwal & M.Hurzuk) beat Exeter/Surrey 15-6

Oxford 1 (L.Drummond & M.Wijeyeratne) beat Cambridge 1 (G.Holliday & G.Lythgoe) 15-8

Bath (A.Sapozhenko & H.Barton-Smith) beat UCL/Imperial (J.Abramovich & Z.Phoplankar) 15-9

Warwick (T.Arjaria & D.Hurst) beat Cambridge 2 (J.Grant-Peterkin & T.Shi) 15-2

Semi-Finals

UCL beat Oxford 1 2-0 (12-8, 12-8)

Warwick beat Bath 2-0 (12-8, 12-10)

Final

UCL beat Warwick 2-0 (12-10, 12-3)