Vijayawada, November 29: With the top-eight seeded players yet to jump into the fray, the women paddlers with reasonably good ranking points and standing notched up their first-round singles wins in the fourth UTT National Ranking Table Tennis Championships at the Ramakotaiah Indoor Stadium today.

The scene was no different in the men's singles qualification rounds as 16 men seeds had a perfect rest day today. When 63 group qualifiers begin the main draw tomorrow, the seeded players will enjoy an extended break in the form of a first-round bye before joining action from the round of 64.

Even the qualifiers in both sections had just two rounds of matches today, with the critical third round scheduled tomorrow. The third round is crucial as it separates the winner from the losers of each group. Luckily, the group leaders had a field day, registering their superiority with easy wins as Anusha Kutambale, Lakshita Narang, Prapti Sen, Sagarika Mukherjee, Yashini Sivasankar, Kavyashree Baskar, Kaushani Nath, Radhapriya Goel, Munmun Kundu, and Divya Deshpande had no hiccups in the first ten groups.

However, Nithyashree Mani of Tamil Nadu in group 11 lost to Kavya Bhatt, a junior girl from Maharashtra, 7-11, 4-11, 8-11. The loss would hurt the TN girl seriously, who would meet Delhi's Prisha Goel in the next round tomorrow. Even if she wins the match against Prisha, it will have no consequence as the Maharashtra girl has beaten the Delhi paddler in her second round. It is just a matter of time before Kavya gets her confirmation as the group qualifier.

There were some surprises, too, for a few youngsters did well to win their matches. For instance, Odisha's Swetapadma Dalai beat Devi Sree Dongari of Telangana 11-8, 11-5, 11-7. The Telangana paddler gave a walkover to Pooja Sahasrabudhe of PSPB in her next round, leaving the group open for the two. Swetapadma now has a big task of beating the former India player from PSPB to qualify for the knockout stage.

In the men's singles qualification matches, top players like Abhishek Yadav, Siddesh Pande, Tharun Shanmugam, Anukram Jain, and Hardikar Mandar, to name a few, posted wins against their opponents. But their keeping clear of any second-round hurdles and edging out other aspirants will depend on their third-round matches tomorrow. 

Meanwhile, Ramjali Kajol of Andhra Pradesh defeated Mohona Ghosh of West Bengal 11-6, 11-9, 11-9 in their first-round women's singles match in Group 4. But it was not rosy for the other players from Andhra as N. Nazeerabi, Vaishnavi Yandamuri, and Moheta Machiraju put themselves in trouble after losing their first-round matches.

In the men's singles, Cheekati Kushal Kumar in Group 15 beat Siddharth Raja of Tamil Nadu 6-11, 11-6, 11-8, 11-8. Kushal, who lost his first game, picked up steam in the second to level and sustain the pace to wrap it up quickly. But the other Andhra players that lost include Maheedhar Poosapati, Praveen Kumar, Karthik Kolli, Pawan Kumar, S. Mahendra and M. Pragyan.