Mohali, October 24: The sudden extended monsoon rains since early morning and the breezy conditions outside could not dampen the spirits of the children competing in the second leg of the UTT National Ranking North Zone Table Tennis Championships at the Sports Complex at Sector 78 here today.

The competition department, however, had to rearrange tables in the basketball hall. But the enthusiasm never withered with the children eager to get down to business. With just the Youth Under-17 Boys and Girls qualification events scheduled for the day, the group matches were somewhat delayed.

But chief referee A.S. Kler said they would complete the matches scheduled for the day as the main draw in the section begins tomorrow along with Youth Under-15 group qualifications.

In the second-round group matches this afternoon, the results of most matches went along the expected lines. Yet, some matches went the full distance, keeping the winners’ hope alive. For instance, Karnataka’s Varun Kashyap was surprised by Harshit Kumar of Bihar, who kept his opponent on the tenterhooks until Kashyap managed to take the last game to win 11-1, 3-11, 11-6, 5-11, 11-7.

Delhi’s Atherva Gupta also struggled before overcoming Punjab’s Vanad Kumar, who needed to win the last two games to beat the Punjab lad. The Delhi boy won 8-11, 11-6, 11-13, 11-7, 11-4. Rajasthan’s Aaron Gupta managed to put it across Daksh Khandelwal of Delhi to win 11-7, 7-11, 7-11, 11-9, 11-8; Haryana’s Siddhant Kataria also defeated Delhi’s Arjav Gupta 8-11, 11-8, 8-11, 11-5, 11-5 to rekindle his hopes. The match between Gujarat’s Dhyey Jain and Arjit Das of National Centre of Excellence, Kolkata, also got stretched with the Gujarat boy romping home 11-8, 9-11, 11-7, 5-11, 12-10 winner.

Aashish Jain of Delhi began and ended well after Shreyas Mane from Maharashtra gave some torrid moments. Jain beat Mane 11-7, 7-11, 118, 7-11, 11-9. But Oishik Ghosh of Bengal was not lucky as he went down 3-11, 11-7, 11-9, 10-12, 9-11 to Navaneeth Kutty of TNTTA. Rishabh Mayank of Haryana defeated Rohan Dani, a wildcard entrant from TTFI, 11-6, 9-11, 11-8, 2-11, 11-2 in a bottom group. However, Rajkhowa Roy, also a wildcard, beat Shrisha Roy of Bengal 12-10, 9-11, 11-4, 9-11, 11-8.

Earlier in the day, Punjab’s Director of Sports Parminder Singh inaugurated the championships with the customary knockoff at the center-court table with Punjab Table Tennis Association secretary Pankaj Sharma and other officials in place.

Meanwhile, the top-eight seeds in the Boys and Girls were decided as per their rankings.

Youth Under-17 Boys: Preyesh Raj Suresh (TNTTA), Aadarsh Om Chetri (Del), Divyansh Srivastava (UP0, Jash Modi (Mah), Ankur Bhattacharya (Ben), Samyak Kashyap (Kar), P.B. Abhinand (TTTA) and Sarth Mishra (UP).

Youth Under-17 Girls: Suhana Saini (Har), Lakshita Narang (Del), Taneesha Kotecha (Mah), Sayali Wani (Mah), Pranati P. Nair (Ker), Karuna Gajendran (Kar), M. Hansini (TNTTA), Pritha Vartikar (Mah).