Top seed G.
Top seed G. Sathiyan defeated Gujarat’s Devesh Karia 4-0 to claim his season’s first men’s singles title in the 11Even Sports national ranking (West Zone) table tennis championships in Rajkot on Sunday.
West Bengal’s Suthirtha Mukherjee went on to bag her second women’s title from zonal events when she defeated PSPB’s Mousumi Paul 4-2. Overall, it was her season’s third, including the institutional crown she won in July at Jaipur.
It was a cakewalk for Sathiyan against Devesh, who was rendered helpless, and executed his blistering strikes to unsettle the Gujarat man.
Sathiyan scored a 4-3 win in the semi-finals to oust North Zone finalist and southpaw Sanil Shetty who, after leading 2-1, gave in to the pressure tactics of his PSPB rival.
In the other all-left handers fight, Devesh was placed at 0-2 and 5-9 in the third game against Jubin. But a few errors both at the net and some away-going shots at that time saw the PSPB paddler concede ground to the Gujarat man. From there on, Devesh was a different player altogether as he won 8-11, 6-11, 11-9, 11-3, 11-7, 14-12.
In the women’s semi-finals, Mousumi outlasted top seed Madhurika Patkar 4-2 (11-5, 9-11, 11-7, 6-11, 11-9, 13-11) and second seed Suthirtha defeated former national champion and veteran Mouma Das 11-8, 11-8, 11-13, 11-1, 11-8. Madhurkia was the winner at the North Zone event at Chandigarh.
Airports Authority of India’s Ronit Bhanja blanked out PSPB’s Birdie Boro 4-0 to take home the youth boys singles trophy while West Bengal’s Priyadarshini Das claimed her maiden youth girls crown beating Tamil Nadu’s Amrutha Pushpak 4-3 in what was both paddlers’ first appearance in a final.
Earlier, PSPB’s Manav Thakkar defeated Telangana’s Snehit Suravajjula 4-1 to retain the junior boys’ singles crown and the junior girls title went to Airports Authority of India’s Archana Girish Kamath. She downed Rajasthan’s Priyanka Pareek in straight games.
