PANCHKULA: In a grueling summit clash, Asian Games medallist
Achanta Sharath Kamal prevailed over local favourite
Soumyajit Ghosh
4-3 to clinch the men's singles title of the UTT National Ranking North Zone
Table Tennis
Championships trophy at the Tau Devi Lal Multipurpose Indoor Stadium on Thursday.
The 39-year-old from Tamil Nadu led 3-1 but a mentally strong Soumyajit staged a near-perfect recovery to square at 3-3 before the top-seeded Sharath brought all his experience to end the Haryana paddler's chances. For Sharath, it was the first zonal title after Vizag in 2016.
Sharath should have finished in the sixth game itself when he led 5-0. He, however, allowed Soumyajit to claw his way back to take the issue to the decider. In the last game, Sharath showed his class and wasted little time, picking up the winner's purse of Rs 84,000.
The women's singles had two worthy players in eighth seed Prapti Sen and unseeded Swastika Ghosh, making it to the final for the first time. The pendulum of fortune swung from one extreme to another until the decider. But for this, one could predict their approaches.
However, Prapti made fewer mistakes than Swastika, and that made the difference between lifting the trophy and losing the grip over it. Despite being unwell, the girl from Kolkata seized the opportunity to take home the prize money of Rs 72,000.
Earlier, Sharath overcame a stiff challenge from Harmeet Desai of Gujarat to advance to the final. Trailing at 1-3, Sharath made a sterling comeback to level things up to edge past Desai 11-8, 8-11, 4-11, 7-11, 11-4, 11-9, 12-10.
The other semifinal between a rejuvenated Soumyajit Ghosh and
Manav Thakkar also went down to the wire, with both Ghosh and Thakkar trying to unsettle each other, before the local paddler went up 14-16, 11-5, 11-6, 13-11, 6-11, 9-11, 14-12.
In the women's singles semi-finals, Prapti Sen outsmarted Takeme Sarkar to win 4-1 while Swastika Ghosh blanked out
Anusha Kutumbale
4-0.
In the Youth Under-19 Boys, top four seeds Payas Jain, Deepit R Patil, Yashansh Malik, and H. Jeho entered the quarterfinals. Similarly, in the Under-19 Girls, Swastika Ghosh, Diya Chitale, Suhana Saini, and Yashaswini Ghorpade moved into the last-eight stages.
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