National Ranking Table Tennis Championships: Top seeds have it easy

Payas Jain and Yashansh Malik decimated their opponents to enter the U-19 Youth Boys singles quarterfinals in Dehradun on Sunday. The two top-seeded paddlers are participating at the UTT National Ranking Table Tennis Championships in Dehradun on Sunday.

Payas Jain, the top seed, beat Karnataka table tennis player Samyak Kashyap. Yashansh Malik got the better of Gujarat's Chitrax Bhatt with an identical 4-0 win.

A defensive H. Jeho showed enormous patience to account for Tamil Nadu table tennis player Preyesh Raj Suresh, 4-1, Unseeded Vishwa Deenadayalan, also from Tamil Nadu, prevailed over sixth-seeded Aadarsh Om Chetri 4-2.

Seventh-seed Jash Modi of Maharashtra went down fighting against qualifier Soumyadeep Sarkar of Bengal 4-3, in one of the best matches of the day.

In what was a touch-and-go round 32 match, Soumyadeep upstaged Jash in the decider. Both players matched stroke for stroke, keeping their chances alive until the deciding set. In the decider, the Bengal table tennis player raced ahead as he was flawless with his execution.

In the match between Vishwa and Aadarsh, the Tamil Nadu table tennis player had the measure of his opponent that paved the way for his triumph.

Nithyashree accounts for second seed

In the Youth Under-19 Girls category, unseeded Nithyashree Mani of Tamil Nadu upset second-seed Yashaswini Ghorpade of Karnataka 4-2.

Though Nithyashree took the lead, Yashaswini came back to win the second game. Then it was Nithyashree's turn to surge ahead and later the Karnataka table tennis player followed suit.

However, the Tamil Nadu table tennis player made the most of her chances in the fifth and the sixth to seal Yashaswini’s fate.

In another round-of-32 match, UP table tennis player Radhapriya Goel enacted a similar scene against Maharashtra’s Ameet Vidhi Shah. But Radhapriya, playing as a TTFI wildcard, went all out to win the fifth and sixth games to enter the quarter-finals.

In other matches, top-seed Suhana Saini, third-seed Diya Chitale, fifth-seed Swastika Ghosh, and eighth-seed Taneesha Kotecha moved into the quarter-finals.