Smooth passage for seeded players

New Delhi, August 20, 2014: The Petroleum Sports Promotion Board’s Sudhanshu Grover, Air India’s Mallika Bhandarkar and Airports Authority of India’s Ayhika Mukherjee were the three prominent and upcoming paddlers who failed to make the cut for the main draw in the AAI 44th Inter-Institutional Table Tennis Championships being played here at the Tyagraj Stadium today.

But for these upsets in group stages, all top players participating in the season opener made their forays smoothly. The men, with 56 players in the draw, will play two rounds on Wednesday while the women, with 32 in fray, will have a round less. With the pre-quarterfinals in both sections beginning from tomorrow, the race to the title chase will get intensified.

Out of the two Glasgow CWG medallists from India, only Anthony Amalraj had turned up for the team event here as A. Sharath Kamal had chosen to give a miss to the championships. But Amalraj, after making an appearance on the opening day, had pulled out owing to fever. Until the main draw, there were doubts about his participation in the singles event. But with the draw out, it has become clear that he will no longer be participating in the championships.

National champions Sanil Shetty and Ankita Das have rightfully earned the No. 1 spots in the men and women’s singles seeding lists. Harmeet Desai, with his runner-up position at the Patna Nationals, is seeded behind Shetty while G. Sathiyan has jumped several spots to be at No. 3. Soumyajit Ghosh, who had a mixed bag, missing quite a few zonals, last season finds himself seeded at No. 4.

But with a reasonably good showing here so far, he gets a chance to go up the ladder and can even be expected to surprise some of the top seeds. In any case, Amalraj’s absence should boost the chances of Ghosh as well as other paddlers.

Madhurika Patkar is No. 2 seed while veteran Poulomi Ghatak despite an indifferent form, has been seeded behind Patkar. Pooja Sahasrabudhe and Manika Batra are behind Poulomi at No. 4 and 5. The women’s draw seems a good one with no player getting a first-round bye which makes the contest even and interesting.

Unlike in the women’s section, top eight players have been given a first-round bye. But all players will be getting engaged from round two, to be played later tonight.

Top women’s doubles pair of Madhurika Patkar and Pooja Sahasrabudhe has entered the quarterfinal beating AAI’s Anuska Dutta and Oishwarya Deb 3-0. Another pair from PSPB—Soumi Mondal and Mousumi Paul—had an easy passage while the other pairs were extended the full distance.

In the mixed event, the husband and wife duo Subhajit Saha and Nandita Saha will take on in the final Jubin Kumar (Haryana) and Neha Aggarwal (PSPB) tomorrow evening. The Sahas defeated the RSPB pair of G. Vinod and Shreya Ghosh 11-7, 11-9, 11-8 while Jubin and Neha accounted for AAI’s Sushmit Sriram and Nikhat Bhanu 8-11, 14-12, 12-10, 12-10 in a duel that lasted almost one hour.

TTFI Press release