Manav bags men’s title, Sreeja wins women’s crown

Vijayawada: Top-seeded Manav Thakkar defeated an injured G Sathiyan 4-2 to lift the men’s singles trophy while Sreeja Akula rallied to beat Archana Kamath and win the women’s crown in the UTT National Ranking Table Tennis Championships here on Saturday.

Sathiyan, the second seed, conceded the match in the sixth game when he was trailing 0-2 because of a back spasm.

Nevertheless, he fought and opened well and even led 2-1. But his back pain shot up sharply and rendered him helpless. Yet, the reigning national champion carried on for a while before conceding.

Archana had things going her way in the final against top seed Sreeja. Leading 3-1, she failed to press home the advantage to win the second crown. But credit must go to the RBI woman, who seized the moment in the fifth game and avoided the two close calls in the sixth and seventh games to win the title.

The second seed led 10-8 in the decider but failed to nail it down when the opportunity presented. She allowed Sreeja four consecutive points from that position to help her

claim the title.

Archana will retrospect the loss and regret her defensive tactics at times. It is not her game because whenever she attacked, she more often than not finished well.

Archana decimated third seed Ayhika Mukherjee in the semifinals to win 4-0, and her dominance was so much that she needed just 25 minutes to finish the job.

However, in contrast, she was down and out in the quarters against Anusha Kutumbale of AAI, trailing 0-2 down. Somehow, she gets fired up when down, as happened in Vadodara. It was no different here. She perhaps visualised the Vadodara quarterfinals and upped the ante to clip the wings of Anusha thoroughly and post a 3-2 win.

Sreeja sailed into the final after some midway struggles against fourth seed Sutirtha, winning her semifinal 4-2. Sreeja led 3-0 but let Sutirtha come back strong and breathe down her neck at 2-3. However, the RBI woman wrapped it up in the sixth game.

Sixth seed Sharath was on course when he led 2-0 and 10-8 in the third game of his quarterfinal against Sourav Saha. But the 10-time national champion squandered the advantage to bow out 2-3.

Sharath hardly put any effort into his outing Friday night, and it must have even surprised the paddler himself.

In the men’s singles semifinals, top seed Manav picked up from where he left off Friday to beat Anthony Amalraj 4-1.

Second seed Sathiyan dropped a couple of games against Sourav Saha, but the latter could neither repeat his quarterfinal performance nor stop his rival from entering his maiden final of the season. Sathiyan won 4-2.