Table tennis: Top seed Sreeja Akula bows out on a mixed day for seeded players

It was a day of upsets at the National Ranking North Zone Table Tennis Championships as many seeded players, including top-seeded Sreeja Akula, bowed out in the first round on Thursday.

Sreeja Akula lost to Airports Authority of India (AAI) table tennis player Surbhi Patwari 4-1 at the Tau Devi Lal Multipurpose Indoor Stadium.

Fourth seed Reeth Rishya also exited the North Zone Table Tennis Championships after going down to unseeded Diya Chitale 4-2 in the second round. Reeth endured a tough first-round match, struggling to beat Poymantee Baisya of Bengal 11-5, 5-11, 5-11, 11-8, 11-8, 9-11, 11-6.

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Earlier in the day, second and third seeds, Sutirtha Mukherjee and Ayhika Mukherjee, made their exits in their round-of-32 matches. Sutirtha lost to Kushi Viswanath of Karnataka 11-8, 11-6, 5-11, 8-11, 11-8, 11-4 while Ayhika couldn't get past Varuni Jaiswal of Telangana losing 6-11, 11-8, 11-9, 13-11, 9-11, 12-10.

Mixed day for men's table tennis seeds

Top-seed Sharath Kamal dropped a couple of games before pulling the plug on 16th seed Jeet Chandra. The PSPB veteran won 3-1, 9-11, 11-7, 11-3, 11-2, 11-7 for a quarter-final showdown with Sudhanshu Grover, who is seeded ninth.

Seventh-seeded Ronit Bhanja’s exit was a surprise as he went down to qualifier Sarthak Seth, a TTFI wildcard, 11-8, 10-12, 11-8, 12-10, 8-11, 12-10 in a grim pre-quarterfinal battle.

The rest of the seeds sealed their passage into the quarter-finals.

In R32 of the men’s singles, Wesley Do Rossario of Haryana trounced eighth seed Sushmit Sriram 11-6, 8-11, 11-4, 11-8, 11-5 and Payas Jain defeated Jubin Kumar, also of Haryana, 11-5, 11-9, 12-14, 11-8, 11-7.

Sixth seed Anthony Amarlaj bowed out to the lesser-known Saidul Alam Ahmed of IA&AD in a round-of-64 match that lasted nearly an hour. Saidul won with scores of 11-7, 11-8, 8-11, 11-9, 8-11, 5-11, 11-2.