Thursday, September 29, 2016

Manav-Jeet showdown in Junior Boys final

Indore, September 28, 2016: Top-seed Manav Thakkar of PSPB decimated Gujarat’s Manush Shah 4-1 to enter the Junior Boys final of the 11Even Sports National Ranking (Central Zone) Table Tennis Championships starts at the Abhay Prashal here today.

Manav will take on Jeet Chandra in the final later tonight along with the girls match. The second-seeded West Bengal player defeated Delhi’s Parth Virmani 4-1, in an equally one-sided second semifinal.
Both the boys’ semifinals did not raise the kind of interests which the girls semifinals did. Yet, it must be said to the credit for both finalists that they never gave any leeway to their opponents and were just keen to wind up as early as possible for adequate rest before the final.

In a field thrown open to the unseeded players—not a single seed sprouted—in the Junior Girls section, two unseeded players made the occasion memorable for them winning their semifinal matches. In the first, West Bengal’s Moumita Datta defeated Andhra Pradesh’s Shailu Noorbasha 4-1, while it was Manushree Patil of Maharashtra, who downed state mate Srushti Haleangadi 4-1, in the second.
Moumita, who hasn’t had a steady season last year, was at her best today when she took on the Andhra girl. Both prone to attacking, Moumita committed fewer mistakes, particularly on her backhand, whereas Shailu’s error percentage increased by the game. For instance, Shailu looked good when she used the flanks to attack, forcing Moumita on the back foot in the first game which the former won.

After sizing her up and pulling her socks up, Momita did well to level the score in the second with blistering forehands, including some special winners down the line. This opened her out as she adopted the same method in the next three to stop Shailu on her tracks even as the Andhra girl was making more and more mistakes either at the net or failing to keep the ball on table.

A similar pattern was noticed in the Manushree-Srushti match as the latter opened with an easy win.  Yet, Manushree had an upper hand at least until the fifth game when Srushti cashed in on Manushree’s accurate shots deserted her suddenly to give a breather to her state mate. Nevertheless, she kept a slender lead but came down to a solitary point when Srushti made it 10-11 with a timeout. But the one-minute break only helped Manushree who received from Srjushti only to kill it with a precise forehand to the right corner for the match point.

Even in women’s singles, only two seeds—Manika Batra and Madhurika Patkar—survived while all others fell by the wayside on a hot afternoon. Top-seed Suthirtha Mukherjee, also title winner at the Institutional championships, went down to former national champion Paulomi Ghatak 4-3 in a thrilling pre-quarterfinal. She will meet in quarters Divya Deshpande who accounted for Krittwika Sinha Roy 4-3 after the latter squandered away a comfortable lead. Manika Batra beat Railways’ Anandita Chakraborty 4-0 and Ayhika Mukherjee handed out a similar verdict to Mouma Das from top half.

Reeth Rishya downed third seed Pooja Sahasrabuddhe 4-3 to earn a quarterfinal meeting with Ankita Das, who beat Archana Kamath 4-3 while K. Shamini won 4-1 against Takeme Sarkar and Madhurika Patkar beat Pooja Sharma 4-0 to complete the quarterfinal line-up from the bottom half.

RESULTS:
Junior Boys: Semifinals: Manav Thakkar (PSPB) bt Manush Shah (Guj) 9-11, 11-3, 11-8, 11-9, 12-10, Jeet Chandra (WB) bt Parth Virmani (Del) 6-11, 11-9, 11-6, 11-8, 14-12.
Junior Girls: Semifinals: Moumita Datta (WB) bt Shailu Noorbasha (AP) 9-11, 11-6, 11-8, 11-5, 11-5, Manushree Patil (mah) bt Srushti Haleangadi (Mah) 5-11, 11-8, 11-4, 11-9, 12-10.

TTFI release

No comments:

Post a Comment