First-round clashes fail to raise interests in Jr National TT

 Alappuzha, June 21: The Youth Boys in the Under-17 and Under-19 categories began their trophy campaign on a serious note in the 83rd Junior and Youth National Table Tennis Championships at the YMCA facilities here today.

With 439 matches scheduled for the first day, the business was not usual for all the competitors, especially for the Under-17 boys, who will complete three rounds of their league engagements by tonight. At least a majority of them will, however, get time to relax until the main draw begins tomorrow afternoon. But the Under-19 boys will continue their first-stage action tomorrow morning and finish their decisive third-round contests.

The first-round matches in both sections had fewer surprises as players from weaker states became the whipping boys. But the match between Vijay Malarvannan of TTTA and Vanad Kumar of Punjab raised a few eyebrows as the latter managed to stretch the Tamil Nadu boy. Vijay won 7-11, 11-5, 11-6, 9-11, 11-4 in group 48 in the Under-17 section.

Shreyas Mane of Maharashtra regrouped himself to beat Adhiraja Hazarika of Assam 5-11, 11-9, 4-11, 12-10, 11-3, Haryana’s Naman Arora, trailing 1-2, beat Jyoti Hriday Sharma of Assam 11-4, 9-11, 8-11, 12-10, 11-7, and West Bengal’s Praneet Bhaskar outsmarted his TTFI wildcard rival A. Gourisankar 9-11, 14-12, 9-11, 11-7, 11-7.

Some other matches did have fierce competition as one witnessed between Manikandan Sundar of TNTTA and Anish Sontakke of Maharashtra. The former won 6-11, 11-3, 11-6, 11-6, 11-9. In group 26, Priyanuj Bhattacharyya of Assam defeated Saptashwa Chakraborty of West Bengal 11-4, 7-11, 11-8, 6-11, 11-8 to keep his chance of qualifying for the second stage.

Harkunwar Singh of Punjab did really well to come back from a precarious position to outwit Andhra’s Sri Prabhath Sai 11-9, 6-11, 3-11, 11-5, 11-8. Akhilesh Khajuria of Jammu and Kashmir, despite leading 2-1, could not press home the advantage and went down 11-9, 6-11, 11-5, 9-11, 6-11 to Punjab’s Kirsh in his encounter.

SVN Krishna of Andhra had a tricky outing against Aaryan Rawat of Uttarakhand but the former managed to win 14-16, 11-1, 11-4, 9-11, 11-6. Kerala’s Mohammad A Naffil squandered his best opportunity, after levelling the score 2-2, to bow out of the competition when he lost 8-11, 8-11, 11-4, 11-6, 9-11 in a close match to Soumik Basak of West Bengal.

There was hardly any shift in the Under-19 first-round clashes with the stronger boys going through the motions to win their matches clinically.

A TTFI press release