Moumita gains pre-eminence as Archana cedes

Rajkot, October 13, 2016: Archana Girish Kamath, the Youth Girls Singles champion in the last zonal at Indore, went down fighting 2-3 (12-14, 7-11, 11-9, 11-6, 4-11) to the Junior Singles title-winner Moumita Datta as the Bengaluru girl failed to make the main-draw cut in the 11Even Sports National Ranking Table Tennis Championships at the Veer Savarkar Municipal Corporation Stadium here today.

This was the most shocking aspect of the women’s qualification round as 24 qualifiers emerged winners from as many groups to join the eight top-ranked players in the second stage play tomorrow.

The match proved decisive for both Archana and Moumita Datta from West Bengal after they had posted two wins each in group 17. 

After a prolonged play and a few deuces, Moumita won the first game on extended points. Upset as she was, Archana was unable to come to terms even in the next which she lost without a fight. However, the AAI girl fought back nicely to wrest the initiative from the West Bengal paddler to level scores. But in the decider, Moumita simply outplayed her rival with an attacking game which booked no challenge from Archana.

Telangana’s Shailu Noorbasha had good, fighting outings against all the three girls in the same group—Archana, Moumita Datta and Simin Atodaria (Gujarat)—but lost two matches 2-3.

But for these anomalies, most other groups threw the group leaders as winners while in some the second-placed player grabbed the top slot to enter stage 2. All top group players, as expected, had easy passage while in group 14 there was a three-way tie. Krittika Malik of Delhi took the appointed place while surprisingly Sagarika Mukherjee of Railways lost out despite winning against the Delhi girl 3-2 (9-11, 11-4, 11-8, 13-15, 11-5). What cost her place in the second stage was the loss to Telangana’s Naina who beat the RSPB girl 11-9, 11-7, 11-5.

Former national champion K. Shamini did not have to enter the arena and yet she made it to the main draw from group 1 after her group companions from Telangana and Madhya Pradesh failed to turn up after entering. Even Shruti Amrute of Maharashtra had to just play one match against Puja Paul of North Bengal and the 3-2 win was good enough to see her through. The other player in the group from RBI was absent.

Similarly, there were quite a few dropouts in men’s singles group matches, too, making the contests in group 1 and 2 a two-horse race. Sourav Saha of PSPB looks the candidate to make the grade from group 1 while it should be Sougata Sarkar of LIC from the other.

With one more round to go in the men’s event, a clear picture about the 40 group qualifiers will be known only later tonight. Meanwhile, the Youth events in both the sections will get underway. The Youth Girls and Youth Boys have been divided into 16 and 24 groups with the group winner qualifying for the next stage. They will be joined by the eight top ranked players from each section.