Chandigarh, December 21: With as many as 1,663 individual entries in the two sections of the ongoing 80th Cadet and Sub-Junior National Table Tennis Championships, the match schedule  of the promotional events got very crowded as the individual events began at the Basketball Hall of Sector 42 Sports Complex here today.

The entries for the Sub-Junior Boys alone stood at 228 with the girls following closely at 215 while in Cadet Boys and Girls it was 189 and 171, respectively.

Anargaya Manjunath, who led Karnataka’s title-victory in team events yesterday, is the top-seeded player in Sub-Junior Girls. Similarly, Payas Jain who was expected to lead Delhi’s march into the final is the No. 1 seed in Sub-Junior Boys category.

Both the boys and girls in the category have been divided into 56 groups, with top-eight ranked players directly entering the main draw. They will also enjoy first-round byes as the draw will be of 64 in each section. They will be joined by 56 group winners from both sections.

In contrast, however, the Cadet Boys have been divided into 60 groups and Girls in 56 groups with no player being given any benefit of on the basis of national ranking they have obtained. The reason for this, according to the competition department of TTFI, is the lack of consistency among players. But with one player from each group making it to the main draw round, the top-four ranked boys will receive first-round byes while it will be eight will in Cadet Girls for the draw of 64 players, respectively.

At the end of the first round of group matches in Cadet Boys and in Cadet Girls, the group toppers had easily won their matches and are a step closer to qualifying for the main draw. There will be hardly any change in the trend as far as the Sub-Junior and Girls who would be playing their first round matches.

In fact, even in the latter groups which are considered having weaker players, the group toppers have won their matches. But the second round matches later will indicate how they are placed at the end of the day and whether they can make the second stage cut after the final round tomorrow before the main draw matches begin from the afternoon.

Top pairs in quarters

Meanwhile, top-seeded Payas Jain and Aadarsh Om Chetri of Delhi have entered the quarterfinals of the Sub-Junior doubles, beating their rivals Tej Suriya and Akshat Sha from Andhra Pradesh 11-9, 14-12, 11-7. They will meet the Maharashtra A’s pair of Sameeha Kulkarni and Aadil Anand in the quarterfinals tomorrow. The Maharashtra duo won UP’s Akshat Tyagi and Vibhor Garg in a tough pre-quarters 11-5, 7-11, 8-11, 11-6, 11-9.

In the bottom half, No. 2 seeded pair from Tamil Nadu, Preyesh Suresh Raj and Vishwa Deenadayalan had moved into the quarterfinals with an easy 11-7, 11-4, 11-4 triumph over Assam’s Aryaman Das and Ankit Sharma 11-6, 11-6, 7-11, 6-11, 11-9 in another tough encounter.

The Tamil Nadu pair will take on in the quarterfinals the duo from Gujarat, Pratham Maldani and Bur Malubhaiwala, who beat Rajasthan’s Dhruv Gupta and Daksh Jain 11-6, 10-12, 11-4, 11-8.   

The other doubles winners that entered the quarterfinals included Raunak Roy and A. Bhattacharya from West Bengal, Srikant Kashyap and Samyak Kashyap from Karnataka, Divyansh Srivastava and Sarth Mishra from UP and Kerala’s Amir Afthab and Joseph Varghese.