Aizawl: All the eight seeded players sailed into the women’s singles pre-quarterfinals even as the seeded men’s players enjoyed first-round byes in the main draw of the 11Even Sports National Ranking (East Zone) Table Tennis Championships at the R Dengthuama Multipurpose Indoor Stadium at Mualpui here today.
Top-seeded Suthirtha Mukherjee from West Bengal, who has three titles this season, was a bit rusty and it was visible when she dropped a game to AAI’s Sreeja Akula to move up 11-8, 6-11, 11-5, 11-6, 13-11. However, fourth seeded Mouma Das struggled to overcome Tamil Nadu’s Amrutha pushpak before winning 11-6, 8-11, 9-11, 13-11, 11-8, 11-6. Fifth seed Ankita Das, too, had to endure Railways Sagarika Mukherjee before advancing to the next round with a 11-9, 11-8, 6-11, 7-11, 11-5, 11-8 triumph.
However, the match of the day was between two qualifiers, Maharashtra’s Manushree Patil and Karnataka’s Kushi Viswanath, which the former won 11-6, 4-11, 5-11, 11-7, 11-8, 3-11, 11-8. Manushree was down 1-2 but regained composure to lead 3-2. But the Karnataka girl put up a gritty fight to win the sixth game and take the issue to the decider. The Maharashtra girl, with an edge throughout, stopped her rival three points short.
From the bottom half, second seed Madhurika Patkar sent Rajkot quarterfinalist Varuni Jaiswal of Telangana packing with a 4-0 verdict while sixth seed Pooja Sahasrabuddhe did the same to Vidya Narasimhan of CRSP and seventh seed Krittwika Sinha Roy dropped a game before winning over Anuska Dutta 4-1.
In other matches, Reeth Rishya made it a one-sided affair against Srushtti Halengadi of Maharashtra with straight games win, Telangana’s Nikhat Banu defeated veteran Railways player Anindita Chakraborty 4-2, seventh seed Divya Deshpande beat Rajashtan’s Priyanka Pareek 4-1, Raiwlays’ Takeme Srka downed AAI’s Chipia Frenaz 4-1, Seleenadeepthi Selvakumar of Tamil Nadu beat Senhora D’Souza of Maharashtra 4-1, K. Shamini downed Delhi’s Garima Goyal 4-1, Karnataka’s Setha Kumaravel defeated Moumita Datta of West Bengal 4-1 and AAI’s Ayhika Mukherjee rolled past Maharashtra’s Ashlesha Trehan 4-0.
In men’s singles main draw, four of the eight first round matches went down to the wire and all of them in the bottom half. Drawn in the top half, UP’s Sarthak Gandhi had the measure of PSPB’s Sourav Chakraborty 4-2 (12-10, 11-6, 11-7, 9-11, 14-16, 11-6) in an interesting contest, particularly the first and fifth games getting extended. In fact, Sarthak led 3-0 before losing two on the trot, including one after three deuces when Sourav won 16-14. But Sarthak didn’t extend any further leeway and shut him out in the next.
Railway’s Ravindra Kotiyan, returning to the zonals after missing two owing to his participation in World Railways Games, struggled against Arnab Sarkar of West Bengal. He, however, steadied to win 11-6, 8-11, 5-11, 11-3, 11-8, 5-11, 115). So was the case for Hardikar Mander of Maharashtra, who did well to go up 3-2 after being down 1-2 against North Bengal veteran Raja Kundu before taming the latter 11-8, 9-11, 9-11, 11-5, 11-2, 8-11, 11-5.
Another Railways man, Pankaj Vishwakarma had to bring in all his experience to outwit his West Bengal rival Surajit Das 4-3 (11-8, 9-11, 8-11, 11-9, 10-12, 11-4, 11-7). In this see-saw battle, Pankaj was under tremendous pressure after Surajit ran him down with a 3-2, including winning the fifth game 12-10. But Pankaj won the next and in the decider changed side at 5-5 and allowed just a couple of points to romp home winners.
Qualifiers’ List:
Youth Boys: Anirban Ghosh (WB), Sanish Ambekar (Mah), Lalrin Puia (Miz), Anukram Jain (PSPBA), Harsh Sachnandani (Guj), Akaash Nath (NB), Manush Shah (Guj), Shivaji Roy (Jkd), Subham Ojah (Raj), Ravindra Kotiyan (RSPB), Ananth Devarajan (TN), Parth Virmani (Del), Angad Singh Chhabra (Del), Sarrthak Seth (UP), Subhendu Show (WB), Kiranjoy Pushilal (WB), Raja Kundu (NB), Soham Bhattacharya 9WB), Shakreja (Gourang Shakreja (Har), Jignesh Rahatwal (Mah), Snehit Suravajjula (Telg), Abhimanyu Mitra (WB), Shaurya Pednekar (Mah), Raegan Albuquerque (Mah).
Youth Girls: Sagarika Mukherjee (RSPB), C. Harshavardhini (TN), Tanisi Kirtani (Goa), Moumitta Datta (WB), Chipia Frenaz (AAI), Tanushree Dasgupta (meg), Yashini Sivashankar (TN), Shailu Noorbasha (AP), Ashlesha Trehan (Mah), Abinaya Ramesh (TN), Anuska Dutta (RSPB), Ishita Guptra (Del), Kaushani Nath (WB), Vanshika Bhargava (Del), Sumana Saha (WB), Shruti Amrute (Mah).
