40 boys and 32 girls enter main draw

Bengaluru, September 6, 2012:  Forty boys and 32 girls from the Junior Boys and Girls sections made it to the main draw of the Indian Oil Servo National Ranking (South Zone) Table Tennis Championships at the Sree Kanteerava Indoor Stadium here today. They joined the eight boys and eight girls who were directly seeded into the main draw, taking place later tonight.

Among them were the sub-junior boys’ title winner Anirban Ghosh from West Bengal and runner-up Lalrinpuia of the PSPB Academy, getting a direct entry, apart from Ayush Tayal of Haryana, who exited at the semifinal stage yesterday. In fact, there are as many as five boys from the Academy who are directly seeded into the main draw. Similarly, the sub-junior girls’ winner Naina from Andhra Pradesh and second-placed Sreeja had to play the qualifiers to make progress.

As for the junior girls’ section, three from PSPB—Reeth Rishya, Narasimha Priya and Manika Batra—two from West Bengal, namely Ayhika Mukherjee and Suthirtha Mukherjee, join Karnam Spoorthy from the Airports Authority of India and Air India’s Mallika Bhandarkar in the main draw.

In the group stages, several matches turned out to be one-sided with some walkovers making a few paddlers’ passage easy even as the pretenders fell by the wayside. Three from Karnataka—V.P. Charan, Shreyal Telang and Sunand Vasan—entered the round of 64 while no girl from the host state could qualify.  Also, a few players placed atop their respective groups were surprisingly pushed out of the main draw like M. Kalaivanan of Tamil Nadu, Devdutta Fadnavis and Siddhesh Paney, both of Air India, and Varun Gupta from Uttar Pradesh.

However, some were so lucky to qualify after playing one tough match and getting a walkover in another. Delhi’s Abhishek Jaggi, for instance, struggled to beat Rohan of Punjab 9-11, 3-11, 11-4, 11-4, 11-9. In the three-player group No. 30, Jaggi just played a match before getting a walkover from K.R. Ilakian from Pondicherry.

In the sub-junior girls’ category, there were quite a few upset of sorts with 13 group leaders not making it to the main draw. Among the unluckiest were Seraha Jacob from Kerala from group 14, Dwijal Trived from Gujarat (group 15), Priyanka Parek of Rajasthan (group 20) Jagruti Murbadkar from Maharashtra (group 22) and V. Kushi from Karnataka (Group 27), to name a few.

With the sub-junior boys and girls, also figuring in the Youth events, they had to play without much of rest and that took a toll on them in a tight scheduling of events. With just two rounds got over in the Youth boys and girls categories, several so-called favourites moved to the next stage without a whimper. Abhishek Jaggi from Delhi had to play two matches in his group, first against N. Ashwin from Karnataka and K. Anirudh of Tamil Nadu. Jaggi won against Ashwin 11-8, 14-12, 11-7 in a grueling fight and then beat Anirudh 11-13, 11-8, 11-7, 6-11, 11-3 in yet another extended match.

Other Karnataka boys to lose both their group matches included N. Ashwin, Suchet Shenoy and Nagarjuna which also meant it was curtains for them. Among the girls, it was the turn of Sushimita Bidri, Gayatri Tankasali, K.S. Haripriya, Maitreyee Bailoor and Ridhi Rohith.

The scheduling of events on the day also saw the qualifying matches in the men and women’s sections. The women are slated to play one more round later tonight while the men resume tomorrow. Only after three rounds each in the two sections will there be a clear picture of who will make it to the main draw.

A TTFI Press release