North Zone Table Tennis Championship: Business as usual for Sharath Kamal

Top-seeded table tennis player Achanta Sharath Kamal stormed into the Round-of-32 at the National Ranking North Zone Table Tennis Championships in Panchkula on Monday.

Sharath Kamal beat his sparring partner from Chennai, Karthikeyan Solaiyan,12-10, 12-10, 11-8, 11-4 at the Tau Devi Lal Multipurpose Indoor Stadium.

Tamil Nadu table tennis player Sushmit Sriram, seeded eighth, was rusty to begin with against Riyan Dutta of Gujarat, but ultimately triumphed 9-11, 12-10, 11-6, 7-11, 11-6, 11-9.

Newly crowned World No. 1 table tennis player in the U-17 category, Payas Jain, eased past Sarthak Gandhi of Haryana 13-11, 11-7, 11-8, 12-10 in the first round.

Other table tennis players who advanced to the round-of-32 include Abhimanyu Mitra, Anirban Ghosh, fourth-seed Sanil Shetty, Abhishek Yadav, and Jubin Kumar.

Some first-round matches in the main draw went down to the wire, increasing the excitement among players. Gujarat’s Riyan Dutta had a tough time against Sashwat Baran of Telangana. The latter, who had a bad opening, staged a remarkable recovery to win the next games to go 2-1 up.

However, the Gujarat lad showed character to pay him back in the same coin to win the last two games.

So, was the case with Sarthak Seth, a TTFI wild card entrant. He was down 0-2 but came back strong to take the remaining three to beat Chitrax Bhatta of Gujarat.

Akaash Nath of Bengal, after losing the opening game, returned with a bang to win the match 9-11, 11-7, 14-12, 6-11, 11-9.

Assam’s Agniv Bhaskar had to draw from his reserves to outwit Kerala’s Bharath Krishnan. The Kerala lad made an impressive start winning the first and third games to take a 2-1 lead. But the Assam boy played brilliantly to take the match away from him. He won 3-11, 11-6, 7-11, 11-5, 11-5.

Another Kerala table tennis player, Amir Afthab, defeated Tarun Verma of Punjab 12-10, 11-13, 11-7, 9-11, 11-6 to enter the round of 64 and stay in the hunt.

Women table tennis players in action from Wednesday

The women table tennis seeded players begin their main draw matches on Wednesday. However, 40 qualifiers entered the main draw on Tuesday. The winners, who managed to put it across their opponents, will have to strive hard as the seeded players will come all out to prove their worth after being deprived of competition last year.

Among the qualifiers, Sharmitha Srinivasan of Tamil Nadu outclassed Adrija Sarmah of Assam to win 9-11, 10-12, 10-12, 11-4, 11-5, 12-10, 11-5 in a first-round thriller. Other players who joined her in the round-of-32 include Surbhi Patwari (AAI), Anannya Basak (Maharashtra), Naina (Telangana), Harshavardhini (RBI)Yashaswini Ghorpade (Karnataka), Nithyashree Mani (TN), Poymantee Baisya (Bengal), Varuni Jaiswal (Telangana), Chipia Frenaz (Gujarat), Mariya Rony (Canara Bank), Ankita Das (PSPB), Oishiki Joardar (Bengal), Amrutha Pushpak (RBI), Swastika Ghosh (Maharashtra), and Kushi Viswanath (Karnataka).

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