National table tennis: Roy, Manika and Madhurika bow out

Raipur, Jan 11 (IANS): Petroleum Sports Promotion Board’s (PSPB) Soumyadeep Roy was the lone seed to fall Friday in the men’s singles while Delhi’s Manika Batra and PSPB’s Madhurika Patkar also made early exits from the women’s singles of the 74th National Table Tennis Championships here.

All other seeds entered their respective singles quarterfinals at the national meet here Friday.

Roy, seeded third, played an aggressive game but unseeded Aman Balgu matched him to cash in on the chances. Balgu proved to be more consistent with several winners which helped him overcome the experienced Roy. Balgu won 12-10, 9-11, 12-10, 11-7, 4-11, 12-10.

Despite trailing 2-4, Roy seemed well on course to extend Balgu in the sixth but several unforced errors by the erratic Roy foreclosed his options as Balgu won another extended game to seal Roy’s fate.

Earlier, No.4 seed Madhurika lost to unseeded Neha Aggarwal 3-4 in the pre-quarterfinals while No.6 Manika Batra was dumped by another unseeded Karnam Spoorthy from Andhra in the first round of the main draw. Spoorthy won 8-11, 13-11, 11-7, 11-8, 12-10.

The results: Men’s singles pre-quarterfinals: Soumyajit Ghosh bt L. Satheeswaran 4-1, Jubin Kumar bt Saurav Chakravarthy 4-3, A. Amalraj bt Sourav Saha 4-0, Harmeet Desai bt T. Nitin 4-0, Aman Balgu bt Soumyadeep Roy 4-2, A. Sharath Kamal bt Jignesh Jaiswal 4-0, Devesh Karia bt G. Sathiyan 4-2, Sanil Shetty bt Sougatha Sarkar 4-1.

Women’s singles pre-quarterfinals: Poulami Ghatak bt Takeme Sarkar 4-2, Mousmi Pal bt Mamata Prabhu 4-3, Divya Deshpande bt Reeth Rishya 4-3, Neha Aggarwal bt Madhurika Patkar 4-3, Ankita Das bt Soumi Mandal 4-1, Mallika Bhandarkar bt K. Spoorthy 4-3, Pooja Sahasrabhudhe bt Ayhika Mukherjee 4-3, K. Shamini bt Suthirtha Mukherjee 4-2.