Visakhapatnam, October 22: Top-seed G. Sathiyan faced his toughest challenge so far before summoning experience all his experience and guile to outlast former Junior Boys champion Siddesh Pande 4-2 (7-11, 6-11, 11-6, 11-4, 11-6, 11-9) in the pre-quarterfinal match of the 11Even Sports National Ranking (South Zone) Table Tennis Championships at the Rajiv Gandhi Indoor Stadium here this morning.

He will take on Sushmit Sriram who survived Subhajit Saha’s onslaught to win 4-3. It was a shock for the top-seeded paddler when Siddhesh outplayed him in the first two games to push his opponent on the back foot. But, Sathiyan said enough was enough and took the next four to shut out all ambitious plans of Siddhesh. 

In other round of 16 matches, Manav Thakkar was extended 4-3 by Nitin Thiruvengadam, AAI’s Sushmit Sriram made a fine comeback in the decider to beat Subhajit Saha 4-3, Haryana’s Jubin Kumar, a semifinalist at Rajkot, beat Sarthak Gandhi 4-2, Harmeet Desai advanced beating Aman Balgu 4-0, Raj Mondal beat Utkarsh Gupta 4-1, Devesh Karia won over  Sougata Sarkar 4-0 and A. Sharatah Kamal decimated Nishaad Shah 4-0