Shillong, June 17: Indian boys made a short work of their opposition in Group A to enter the semi-finals of the SAF Junior Table Tennis Championships at the Jawaharlal Nehru Sports Complex indoor hall here today.

As for the junior girls, Cadet boys’ and girls’, the hosts have won their first match with ease and will take on the rest of the teams in fray later in the evening. Unlike in the junior boys section, which is played in two stages, the other team events are decided on a single-group league, where the teams will meet each other to assert their supremacy to decide on the 1-3 positions.

The Indian boys team, comprising Sudhanshu Grover, Abhishek Yadav, Vivek Bhargava and R Anandraj, first defeated Bhutan 3-0 and then accounted for Pakistan for a similar margin of score in a three-team group A. The group leader will now clash in the semi-finals with the second finishing team in group B.

With the late arrival of the Sri Lankan team, the morning matches in group B have been rescheduled. In other words, India will know about their semi-finals opponents only later tonight.

Contrary to expectations, it was not a cake walk for the Indian boys against both Bhutan and Pakistan. Though the hosts side was not extended to the fourth game in any of their matches, there were some hiccups for both Bhargava and Grover as they were extended a bit after having been in good positions. Coach Sandeep Gupta did admit that the boys need to pull up their socks if they wanted complete domination of the championships.

Results:

JUNIOR BOYS GROUP A:

ROUND 1:

INDIA BEAT BHUTAN 3 - 0 (Vivek Bhargava bt  Namgay Dorji  11-6, 11-7, 14-12; Sudhanshu Grover bt  Raj Kumar  11-5, 14-12, 11-6; R Anandraj  bt  Tashi Jamtsho  11-8, 11-4, 11-5.

ROUND 2 :

INDIA BT PAKISTAN 3 - 0 (Yadav Abishek  bt  Rameez Muhammad  11-0, 11-2, 11-8; Vivek Bhargav  bt  Virk Salman Ahmad Tahir  11-6, 11-7, 11-5; R Anand Raj  bt  Khurshid Tabish  11-8, 9-11, 11-4, 11-4.

JUNIOR GIRLS:

INDIA BT PAKISTAN 3 - 0 (Tennison Reeth  bt  Sheikh abeera Ali  11-4, 11-6, 11-6; Mallika Bhandarkar  bt  Babar Farwa  11-5, 11-8, 8-11, 11-3;Narasimha Priya  bt  Saeed Iqra  11-3, 11-5, 11-2.

CADET BOYS:

INDIA BT BANGLADESH 3-0 (Utkarsh Gupta bt Emran Hossain Hridoy 11-4, 11-4, 11-4; Lalrin Puia bt Mohammad Javed Ahmed 11-6, 11-4, 11-7; Birdie Boro/Lalrin Puia bt Emran Hossain/Javed Ahmed 11-5, 11-9, 6-11, 9-11, 11-5.

CADET GIRLS:

INDIA BT NEPAL 3-0 (Karnam Spoorthy bt Sonu Thapa Magar 11-3, 11-1, 11-5; Ayihika Mukherjee bt Sukriti Shreshtha  11-1, 11-1, 11-3; Ayihika Mukherjee/Suthirtha Mukherjee bt Sonu Thapa/Sukiriti Shreshtha 11-2, 11-4, 11-6.