Paul Kealy's play of the day at Sandown

Spirits Bay

From a punting point of view at Sandown the race I'm keen to see is the closing 2m handicap hurdle (3.35).

This is a competitive enough race, as there are a couple of other last-time-out winners in the field, including the four-timer-seeking Navajo Indy, who won the Gerry Feilden last time, but I thought Spirits Bay should have been one of the favourites on Monday, and I still do now.

He was 20-1 in a place then and is barely half that now, but I don't think he's been given enough credit for a really eyecatching return to action at Cheltenham last month. If he builds on that, I'm sure he's going to be a major player.

Spirits Bay was a 25-1 chance at Cheltenham, so he clearly wasn't fancied for that 14-runner contest, but he served notice that a mark of 126 is going to be taken advantage of soon enough with a really bold showing.

Nobody got near five-and-a-half-length winner Mirabad, whose 5lb-claiming jockey Luke Scott rode his rivals to sleep, bagging a long lead some way out and never looking like getting caught, and Spirits Bay was in the worst place possible given how the race panned out.

He had only one behind him on the run to the second last but made such a massive move through the field that he was in second before they jumped the final hurdle.

Not surprisingly, that effort told in the closing stages and he dropped back to fifth, but he was only two lengths off the runner-up and almost three times that ahead of sixth-placed Tintintin, who had been fourth in the Greatwood the time before.

It was a very promising effort from a horse who won two of his three bumpers two seasons ago and two of his five hurdles outings last term (both on soft or heavy ground), and he can surely only improve.

I wouldn't worry about Sam Twiston-Davies riding Jour D'Evasion for Henry Daly, though he's a player, rather than Spirits Bay for the old man, as nobody has ridden the latter over hurdles but Jordan Nailor.