Rajahmundry, December 23, 2014: Maharashtra A and Uttar Pradesh
had to bring out their best to outwit their rivals Madhya Pradesh and Goa and
enter the sub-junior girls quarterfinals of the 76th Cadet and Sub-Junior
National Table Tennis Championships at the Cherukuri Convention Centre here
today.
UP downed MP 3-2 in the top half and Maharashtra A overcame Goa by the same margin in the bottom. The other
quarterfinal winners included Tamil Nadu, Rajasthan, Telangana, Delhi , Karnataka and West Bengal .
The quarterfinal matches in all sections will be played
later tonight with the semifinals and finals slated for tomorrow.
Madhya Pradesh played as well as they could have done but in
the end it was UP that emerged the winners, thanks to Anusha Kutumbale who had
to share the major burden. Not only did she win both her singles, first against
MP’s Suhana Narjinary 3-2, but also against Saundarya Pathak (3-1). She and her
partner Khushi Jain, however, lost their doubles, which pushed the match down
to the wire. Suhana beat Khushi 11-8, 11-4, 9-11, 11-9 in the crucial decider
that clinched it in favaour of UP.
As for Maharashtra A, they were down 1-2 after they lost the
doubles and it was left to Srushti Haleangadi and Payal Bohra to put their best
foot forward to get them back into shape. After Shrusti won the first singles
against Urmila Mense 3-0, Tansi Kirtani restored parity by winning her singles
against Payal Bohra 7-11, 11-4, 11-6, 11-7. Then she combined with Urmila to
take the doubles against the Maharashtra pair
to go 2-1 up. But Shrushti beat Tanisi in straight games and Payal downed
Urmila in her reverse singles to cross the line.
But for these two matches, the other pre-quarterfinals were
more or less one-sided with the fancied teams making the grade.
In Cadet Girls, Assam was scratched despite the
team entering the quarterfinals by upsetting Maharashtra B 3-1 in the
pre-quarterfinals. Trisha Gogoi, who did the star turn for Assam , won both
her singles and then combed with Abrita Bhuyan to clinch the doubles. For
Maharashtra A, only Kheya Shah was able to win her singles against Abrita 7-11,
11-6, 11-7, 14-12. But Trisha, having submitted two date of birth
certificates—in both cases she was an eligible candidate to play in the Cadet
section—the team was punished by the competition manager Ganeshan Neelakanta
Iyer.
“This girl had registered with the TTFI with two birth
certificates. As a policy decision and as per our guidelines, she has to be instantly
penalized. That’s what we have done in this case,” said Ganeshan.
“Because this tantamount to cheating, we have scratched the Assam team. So
Maharashtra B will go through to the quarterfinals instead,” he added.
Meanwhile, the other teams that went through were Gujarat, Delhi , Maharashtra A, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh
and West Bengal .
Of all the pre-quarterfinals in Cadet Boys’ section, the one
between Telangana and North Bengal went the
full distance with the former winning the match 3-2, thanks to A. Advait’s fine
performance in the decider. The match was hanging in balance after the fourth
rubber which Telangana won when Varun Shankar blanked out Jayabrata
Bhattacharjee 3-0. This win must have given confidence to Advait as he overcame
a 1-2 deficit to win 11-8, 9-11, 6-11, 11-7, 11-8 to take his take into the
quarterfinals.
The other winners to join Telangana in fray were UP, Kerala,
PSPBA, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra A and Delhi.
There were no surprises in the sub-junior boys’ category as
PSPBA, Maharashtra A, Delhi, Gujarat, UP, Goa, Telangana and Tamil Nadu posted
easy wins over their rivals to enter the quarterfinals.
A TTFI release
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