Easy victories for top-ranked players

Kochi, December 11, 2011: The top-ranked players in all categories had very little difficulty in putting it across their opponents in the first two rounds of the New India Assurance 73rd Cadet and Sub-junior National Table Tennis Championships here at the Rajiv Gandhi Indoor Stadium on Saturday.

There were, however, some surprises as some of the additional entries—not selected directly by the state associations—made waves and gave some harrowing time for the much-famed names in the Cadet and sub-boys junior sections. Even the girls’ events in both the categories had a few long-drawn matches going to the wire.

For instance, the match between Delhi’s Aryan Khandelwal and Rishab Sachdeva of Haryana went to the wire and the Haryana boy clinched it in his favour with a 13-11, 13-11, 11-3, 11-2, 11-5 verdict. Manipur’s L. Poireiton extended Vishnu Pranav of Karnataka before bowing out 5-11, 7-11, 18-16, 13-11, 4-11. Kerala’s Majrul Islam lost his first round match to Shobhit Dangwal of Uttrakhand after putting up a great resistance. The Uttrakhand boy ultimately won 11-6, 3-11, 12-10, 8-11, 11-7.

The boys from Gujarat, Tamil Nadu and the PSPBA did exceedingly well to keeping their top billing while the girls from Rajasthan, Maharashtra B and Andhra Pradesh kept momentum going their way. In fact, the Cadet girls’ matches were mostly one-sided except for a few that went to the fourth game. Two of Gujarat girls were stretched fully with their opponents giving a good fight. Gujarat’s Isha Maisuria met her match against Manipur’s Priyanka who went down fighting 11-7, 8-11, 4-11, 11-4, 6-11 and Isha’s teammate Sanjana Choksi struggle against Assam’s Biswarupa Bania with the former winning 11-5, 6-11, 10-12, 11-3, 6-11.

In the sub-junior girls category, the entire set of matches turned out to be mere formality for the higher-ranked players. They easily moved into the second round. However, Preeti Yadav of Rajasthan had to bring out all her experiences to the fore when she finally downed Disha Gupta of Karantaka 8-11, 11-8, 7-11, 11-6, 11-9.

The script in the sub-junior boys section was no different with the top seeds just mowing down their opponents in the first round.

A TTFI Press release