Manika Batra, Madhurika Patkar enter semifinal

Women’s top seed, Manika Batra and no. 6 seed Madhurika Patkar battled into the semi-finals of the Vatika national ranking (North Zone) table tennis championships at Hansraj Model School here on Friday.

Manika defeated Pooja Sahasrabudhe while Madhurika accounted for third seed Ankita Das, both matches going into a seventh game. Veteran Subhajit Saha too had to bank on all his experience to enter the men’s semis, beating Ravindra Kotiyan of Railways 4-3. He had earlier sent Sanil Shetty packing in the pre-quarterfinals.

Manika had to dig deep to beat eighth seed Pooja, recovering from 1-3 down. Riding on her strong backhand, she made a fine recovery from Game 5, even as Pooja went into a shell and failed to counter her PSPB colleague.

Divya Deshpande, Central Zone winner at Jamnagar, accounted for RBI’s Krittwika Sinha Roy 4-0, while Mouma Das beat Mousumi Paul 4-2. Madhurika had to play out of her skin to outwit Ankita Das who led 3-2.

Incidentally, this was Ankita’s first national ranking outing this season.Other men’s quarter-final winners included Antohony Amalraj, who beat Abhishek Yadav 4-0, Devesh Karia who defeated another Railways man Anirban Nandi 4-1 and Soumyajit Ghosh, 4-0 winner over Sudhanshu Grover.

Three men’s seeds in all bowed out at the pre-quarter-final stage of the event. Third seed Harmeet Desai, no. 4 Sathiyan and Shett, all losing by 3-4 margins after good fights. Desai went down to Railways veteran Anirban Nandi, and Sathiyan, despite a 3-2 lead, bowed to Kotiyan.