Manush, Prapti clinch titles

Manush Shah of Gujarat and Prapti Sen of West Bengal won the sub-junior boys and girls titles respectively at the national ranking (East Zone) table tennis championships in Guwahati on Friday.

While Manush blanked Alberto Lrruata of PSPBA 4-0, Prapti defeated Manushree Patil of Maharashtra 4-2, both champions winning their second titles of the season.

The Manush-Alberto final was one-sided with the former hardly breaking a sweat against his academy opponent. The girls event saw a closer fight with Prapti who began the season with the South Zone title at Chennai riding on her early 2-1 game lead to victory.

On Thursday, Abhishek Yadav returned to form in time for the youth and junior nationals in Dharamsala, wresting the youth boys title from PSPB team mate Sudhanshu Grover 4-3.

In the youth girls final, Manika Batra overcame a 1-3 deficit to beat Reeth Rishya 4-3 to add to the crown she won at the North Zone championships at New Delhi earlier this month. Incidentally, Manika faced the same opponent in New Delhi too.

For Abhishek, who won his first title this season at Chennai, against the same opponent the going was not easy.

Sudhanshu, winner at New Delhi beating Arjun Ghosh, had all the firepower in his arsenal but in the end, southpaw Yadav struck form. Grover, on the other hand, could not up the ante when it mattered after Abhishek had taken a 3-1 lead. Though Grover managed to win the fifth game, it was too late and too little.

The healthy rivalry between Manika and Reeth, both from PSPB, showed in their final as the former made a strong comeback from 1-3 down to pip Reeth at the wire.

Manika will represent Delhi at the Himachal nationals while Abhishek and Sudhanshu could turn out for Rajasthan as PSPB did not qualify for the nationals.

Delhi’s Payas Jain battled his way to a second successive cadet boys att he expense of UP’s Divyash Srivastava by a 4-3 margin while Bengal’sPrithoki Chakraborty got past Anargaya Manjunath of Karnataka by the same margin.