Bath A sprang an early surprise on us by introducing a new top board, so that David Buckley moved down to board two.

Early results went against us as the bottom two boards only yielded half a point. (Well done, Tom!) Then Alexsei, playing in entertaining and combative style and winning pawns, finally succumbed - possibly he might have tried giving up his Queen for R + B. For anyone following Dave’s updates on WhatsApp, the prospects were not good. “Bath look as though they are going to win” - by now they were leading 2½-½ on boards 4 to 6.

There was one glimmer of hope. Haroon was playing well against his opponent, an FM, rated 2278. His expansion as Black with his advanced d pawn and attacking prospects were enough to warrant a “slightly better” from the engine as early as move 11; by move 14 it was “much better”. White chose to allow Haroon to win the exchange, after which he maintained the pressure until he won another rook on move 24. One got the impression that White was a little shell-shocked to be put under so much pressure so early in the game and never found the best replies. A fine win!

James, with the unexpected pleasure of playing Mr Buckley on board two, allowed exchanges which left him with three isolated e pawns on rows 3, 4 and 5! It was the sort of position where somebody of David’s experience might have been expected to manoeuvre his remaining pieces to exploit the pawn structure and force a winning position. But it didn’t happen and by the time they were down to Queen and five pawns each, any attempt by David to infiltrate would at the very least have allowed a counterattack with endless checks. Well done James – that draw amounts to a real scalp!

Now the match hung on Martin’s game - board three with Black against Paul Helbig. Martin managed to emerge from a drawish looking position with the whole point thanks to a couple of nasty tactics that Paul overlooked - not the first time he has saved a team's bacon at the very end! It had been an excellent recovery from a possibly lost match to achieve a 3-3 draw. Can we build on this to move out of the bottom two?