National table tennis championships: Fancied teams make progress; Chandigarh men stretch TN

As expected, predictable results were the order of the opening day of the National table tennis championship with leading teams staying firmly on course of the pre-quarterfinals on Saturday.

Before the action commenced, host Haryana pointed to a discrepancy in the teams drawn in eight pools each in the men’s and women’s section, the Competition Manager Mr. N. Ganeshan realized the oversight and conducted a fresh draw in the morning.

In the draw made on Friday evening, the teams were ranked based on the individual ranking points of the top three players from each team. However, this morning, quarterfinalists in both sections in the previous National championship, Haryana highlighted one of the rules from the championships’ prospectus that read, “All the Teams shall be drawn into eight Groups as per the last National position and play one another in a round-robin League System to determine the position in each group.”

Without ado, corrective steps were taken by holding a fresh draw. There were teams which expressed their displeasure on the late change, but fairness stood restored.

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The change did not impact the fortunes of any of the quarterfinalists from the last edition. Petroleum, Telangana, Delhi, Assam, Maharashtra, Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, and Haryana in the men’s section won two league matches each to ensure their places in the pre-quarterfinals.

Similarly, Reserve Bank of India, Tamil Nadu, Delhi, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Railways and Bengal book their berths in the women’s pre-quarterfinals.

The remaining eight qualifying teams in the men’s section and seven in the women will be identified on Sunday.

Defending champion Petroleum, without spearhead G. Sathiyan, was hardly tested against Madhya Pradesh and Punjab. Former champions A. Amalraj and Sanil Shetty played in both rounds, while other former champion Harmeet Desai and Manav Thakkar, took turns to warm up with easy victories.

Similarly, in the women’s section, reigning champion Reserve Bank of India fielded top-ranked Sreeja Akula, and Diya Chitale won a match each, while Amrutha Pushpak and Harsha Vardhini recorded two victories each to ensure qualification to the knockout phase.

Former champion Sutirtha Mukherjee surprisingly dropped a game in Railways’ 3-0 triumph over Assam. In the same group, Bengal’s Syndrela Das and Kaushani Nath dropped a game each to Neha Kumari and Mayur Chatterjee of Orissa in the team’s 3-0 triumph.

Last edition’s finalist Tamil Nadu cruised to a 3-0 victory over Chhattisgarh, but not before Selena Deepti Selvakumar bounced back following the loss of the opening game to Surabhi Modi.

Tamil Nadu men took a longer route to stop Chandigarh 3-1 after M. Balamurugan lost in five games to Vishal Garg in the second singles. P. B. Abhinandh gave a winning start, Preyesh Raj made it 2-1 and Balamurugan returned to make amends by clinching the tie.