Jef­frey Ross

Srini­gar Girl should win the Maid­en Stakes over ten fur­longs of Ling­field poly­track to­day and def­i­nite­ly will if able to re­pro­duce her re­cent form over a mile of this track four weeks ago.

In a hot­ly-con­test­ed hand­i­cap Srini­gar Girl ran on strong­ly to fin­ish sec­ond, beat­en less than two lengths, by hot-favourite Lowther, a re­li­able yard­stick which has con­firmed val­uew of that form since.

A well-bred gen­uine fil­ly Srini­gar Girl needs to end an ex­as­per­at­ing spell of placed ef­forts, sec­ond in her last three races, for breed­ing pur­pos­es; five weeks hence this Shamardal fil­ly needs to be cov­ered hav­ing gained win­ning brack­ets. There are too many maid­ens lit­ter­ing sales cat­a­logues and Sir Hen­ry Ce­cil will un­doubt­ed­ly be anx­ious this af­ter­noon.

Ac­cord­ing to my time-hand­i­cap none of five ri­vals has any chance with Srini­gar Girl, blink­ered for the fifth suc­ces­sive time.

That's some­what dis­qui­et­ing and I'm not con­vinced about jock­ey Ian Mon­gan but cer­tain­ly wont be op­pos­ing Srini­gar Girl.

Ear­li­er Mon­gan rides re­cent dis­ap­point­ment Jer­matt in the Maid­en Stakes over five fur­longs and what beat this John Jenk­ins-trained four-year-old Kyl­lachy geld­ing will win!

Rid­den by Jamie Spencer last week Jer­matt was in­volved in a barg­ing match with Sum­mer Sun for at least two fur­longs; what was that all about?

Jer­matt was a hot-favourite but the vibes nev­er felt right, ei­ther be­fore or dur­ing the race and at times my sus­pi­cions are aroused; he even­tu­al­ly fin­ished an ig­no­min­ious fourth.

Apart from Richard Fa­hey-trained Tang­han, com­ing back from a 'spell' of 142 days, there isn't a se­ri­ous ri­val and my play will be a crafty each-way dou­ble in­to Srini­gar Girl. Odds of both are like­ly to be ac­cept­able and dou­bled should sup­ply a healthy pay-pack­et.

Bus­sa at­tempts to ex­tend a win­ning se­quence to four in the 'aged' hand­i­cap over six fur­longs but Christo­pher Chua and Seb Sanders look a for­mi­da­ble com­bi­na­tion; a rock-sol­id each-way bet.

There are sev­en races sched­uled for Kemp­ton, all hand­i­caps; they ob­vi­ous­ly don't want crowds and, ap­par­ent­ly, don't need them as glob­al me­dia rights suf­fice. Sad state of af­fairs, eh?

Cat­t­er­ick stages a jump­ing card and for any up-to-date se­lec­tions don't for­get to click on to dai­lyearn­er.co.uk. Ground con­di­tions are slow­ly but sure­ly im­prov­ing and this is a won­der­ful pe­ri­od for bet­ting NH hors­es.

SE­LEC­TIONS

9.25 Jer­matt

10.55 Christo­pher Chhua (e.w)

11.25 Srini­gar Girl (nap)