Easy semifinal passage for Ghosh; Amalraj struggles

Dharwad, August 25: PSPB’s Soumyajit Ghosh took less than 20 minutes to book an easy passage in the semifinals of the LIC-sponsored Institutional Table Tennis Championships at the District Indoor Hall here today.

He demolished Sushmit Sriram (AAI) 4-0. In the rest of the quarterfinals which saw some ups and downs, the best turned out to be the one between Anthony Amalraj and Sanil Shetty which the former won 4-2.

If Soumyajit was giving TT lessons to Sriram, G. Sathiyan was forced to learn some from Harmeet Desai, who won 4-1. Sathiyan’s erratic game only helped Desai’s cause. Nevertheless, one cannot take away the credit from Desai who will now meet Ghosh in the first semi-final tomorrow. The other semifinal will pit AAI’s Nitin Thiruvengadam who, after his fine victory over Soumyadeep Roy in the pre-quarters, carried his form into quarters to beat Jignesh Jaishwal from Gujarat 4-1, against Amalraj.

The women’s quarter-finals had all the thrills, with Pooja Sahasrabudhe-Ankita Das match keeping the spectators on the edge of the seat. Both Pooja and Ankita kept attacking each other and one could see the fighting abilities of Ankita. Initially, they were going neck and neck in the decider, but it was Pooja who went up 10-7. But credit must be given to Ankita for the way she came back to hold the advantage—she missed three match points—only to give it away on a platter to Pooja.

As for Manika, it was the story of so near and yet so far. The Delhi girl led in the first three games and managed to take just one game against a cool-headed Shamini. Manika, for strange reasons, preferred to go the defensive way for most part of her match and that put paid to her ambitions. Otherwise, a semi-final slot was within her grasp but in desperation she threw away the chance. In the third match, Neha failed to raise her game against Madhurika Patkar who was the better of the two on the day. Poulomi Ghatak, definitely not in best of form after a hiatus, was struggling against Kritwika Sinha Roy. But lack of experience on Kritwika’s part let her down at crucial junctures when she missed a few winners.

Though it seemed a fair draw, unseeded Jignesh Jaishwal stretched sixth-seeded Jubin Kumar to win 4-3. The Gujarat player was comfortably leading 2-0 but an off-colour Jubin came back nicely to make the pre-quarterfinal match very interesting. With fortunes fluctuating the match went to wire before Jaishwal clinching it with the minimum margin at 12-10. No. 3 seed Soumyadeep Roy was not even a shadow of his former self and lost to young Nitin Thiruvengadam in straight games. No. 4 seed Harmeet Desai lost to top-seed Soumyajit Ghosh, but not before making a veiled threat. But No. 8 seed Aman Balgu went down in straight sets to Sushmit Sriram.

However, unlike the men’s fare, at least three women pre-quarterfinals matches went the full distance. Sixth-seed Neha Aggarwal came back from 0-2 down to beat Reeth Rishya, Kritwika Sinha Roy put up a great fight to outwit No. 7 seed Divya Deshpande  4-3 and Nikhat Bhanu frittered away what was her match to No. 4 seed Ankita Das. There were moments of great fight backs from Nikhat, who after leading 10-7 in the decider, lost to the guiles of Ankita Das. Similarly, Neha employed her attacking tricks against Reeth to go past the line.

Results:

Men: Quarterfinals: Soumyajit Ghosh bt Sushmit Sriram 4-0 (11-4, 11-9, 11-2, 11-9), Harmeet Desai bt G. Sathiyan 4-1 (12-10, 2-11, 11-7, 11-6, 11-2), V. Nitin Thiruvengadam bt Jignesh Jaiswal 4-1 (14-12, 9-11, 11-6, 11-7, 12-10), Anthony Amalraj bt Sanil Shetty 4-2 (11-7, 6-11, 4-11, 11-5, 19-17, 11-9); PQF: Harmeet Desai bt Anirban Ghosh 4-0, V. Nitin Thiruvengadam bt Soumyadeep Roy 4-0, G. Sathiyan bt Abhishek Yadav 4-1, Sushmit Sriram bt Aman Balgu 4-0, Soumyajit Ghosh bt Sudhanshu Grover 4-1, A. Amalraj bt Sourav Saha 4-1, Sanil Shetty bt Sougata Sarkar 4-1, Jignesh Jaishwal bt Jubin Kumar 4-3.

Women: Quarter-finals: K. Shamini bt Manika Batra 4-1 (11-8, 5-11, 13-11, 13-11, 11-2), Pooja Sahasrabudhe bt Ankita Das 4-3 (11-6, 8-11, 11-8, 6-11, 11-7, 5-11, 15-13), Madhurika Patkar bt Neha Aggarwal 4-1 (15-13, 8-11, 11-9, 11-7, 12-10), Poulomi Ghatak bt Kritwika Sinha Roy 4-2 (12-10, 11-9, 11-6, 7-11, 6-11, 14-12); PQF: K. Shamini bt Anandita Chakraborty 4-2, Manika Batra bt Mousmi Paul 4-0, Pooja Sahasrabudhe bt Sanya Sehgal 4-0, Ankita Das bt Nikhat Bhanu 4-3, Madhurika Patka bt Suthirtha Mukherjee 4-2, Neha Aggarwal bt Reeth Rishya 4-3, Kritwika Sinha bt Divya Deshpande 4-3, Poulomi Ghatak bt Mallika Bhandarkar 4-0.

A TTFI Press release