Table Tennis National Ranking Championships: Vishwa, Swastika win U-19 titles

Table tennis players Vishwa Deenadayalan and Swastika Ghosh won the Youth U-19 Boys and Girls trophies at the UTT National Ranking Table Tennis Championships on Monday. They come from Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra respectively.

Vishwa beat Deepit Rajesh Patil 4-2 (6-11, 11-8, 8-11, 11-8, 11-6, 11-8) in the final. Deepit went neck-to-neck until the fourth game, sharing two games apiece. It was then that the Tamil Nadu table tennis player decided to shift gears and clean Deepit up.

Despite leading 2-1, the Maharashtra table tennis player could not raise his game as Vishwa was adept and made a few unforced errors. In comparison, Deepit was unable to control his game, leaving the table for Vishwa to dominate.

In the girls category, Swastika beat Diya Chitale 4-3 (9-11, 11-9, 9-11, 5-11, 11-6, 12-10, 12-10). Diya seemed to have one hand on the trophy when she was on championship point at 10-9 in the sixth game. But she squandered the advantage, allowing Swastika to deuce to keep herself floating.

Read: Payas Jain, Suhana Saini win bronze medals at World Youth Championships

Swastika took a point off her opponent’s service and finished off in style when she got the chance to serve.

What raised hope was the way Diya fought her way back into the decider. Trailing 2-6, the third seed pressured her rival with an excellent recovery. Yet, the intent of Swastika was never to give up and she showed it when it mattered the most.

---

Top table tennis seeds bow out in semi-finals

In the semi-finals earlier, top-seed Payas Jain was 1-2 down and brought out his best game to win the fourth game to level the score. Deepit took the fifth to go up before Payas pulled on the level in the next.

In the decider, Deepit hit the groove and stopped Payas well short.

In the second semifinal, Vishwa had a fairly easy outing against Delhi table tennis player Yashansh Malik. The two lanky table tennis players fought well, particularly Vishwa, after dropping the opening game.

In the second both missed quite a few game points before the Tamil Nadu table tennis player won the marathon 19-17.

Though he lost the next, he managed to put it across the Portugal World Championships bronze medallist, winning the next two.

Tamil Nadu table tennis player Nithyashree Mani failed to get past third-seed Diya Chitale. She had felled second-seed Yashaswini Ghorpade in the pre-quarterfinals.The table tennis player from Maharashtra, except for the second game, had the measure of Nithyashree to win 4-1 and seal her place in the final.