Thane, November 16: Arjun Ghosh of Airports Authority of India has been accorded the pride of place in men singles while Manika Batra has been given the top-seeding position in women singles in the on-going 11Sports National Ranking Championships (West) for the Mayor Cup at the Dadoji Konddev Stadium here today.

At the end of the qualification rounds in both sections, with two players getting into the main draw, the prominent names, including two veterans and former national champions Mouma Das and Poulomi Ghatak took top slots in their respective groups while quite a few youngsters, too, made the cut.

As for men singles, Anthony Amalraj is seeded second seed and he would be mentally prepared to recapture the title which he could not on the previous occasion. Third seed Manav Thakkar, who won his first men singles title in the previous tournament, can really prove his mettle while No 4 seed Raj Mondal would be looking to make amends for the title loss.

No. 5 Sanil Shetty, the local boy, would be the crowd’s favourite and he will get a lot of support when he makes his appearance tomorrow when the main draw begins. Similarly, No. 6 Sushmit Sriram, who missed a golden opportunity of entering his first men singles final, let the chance slip of his hands in North Zone after putting himself upfront with a 3-0 and 6-3, 9-7 lead in the fourth game against Mondal. The AAI man gets his last opportunity of the season and he would be ready to cash in on it.

As for Sougata Sarkar and Abhishek Yadav, the No. 7 and 8 seeds, they would be looking to reach at least the quarterfinals if not go further ahead. Since the men’s draw is of 128 paddlers, there will be a number of byes and the top 16 players are expected to be exempted from first-round appearance. But it can backfire as it happened in the case of Amalraj, who exited in the round of 32 to Abhimanyu Mitra of West Bengal, after being rusty.  

Among the 9-16 players, who have been given direct entry into the main draw, there are paddlers like Sourav Saha, Devesh Karia and Jubin Kumar who the real floaters and can cause a flutter or two. But they are yet to prove themselves as far as consistency goes this season.

It will be interesting to see who among the two women players—Manika Batra and No. 3 seed Pooja Sahasrabudhe—will wear the third crown of the season as both have two each even as the other six seeds, including No. 2 Sutirtha Mukherjee and No. 4 Madhurika Patkar, would try to live up to popular expectations and end the season with at least one title to their name.

Madhurika, especially, will be on her home ground and the local favourite is well aware of the pressure on her to perform well to retain her position intact. All the four players could be getting the first-round byes tomorrow as the second stage draw would be of 64 players. There are already 52 qualifiers—two each from 26 groups—who will be joined by the No. 5 to No. 8 seeds in the first round.

No. 5 seed Divya Deshpande, despite entering the final at Greater Noida, dropped what could have been her second national ranking trophy from a winning position when Manika launched herself in the nick of time. The No. 5 seed would like to repair the self-inflicted damage. But for No. 6 Ankita Das, No. 7 Sreeja Akula and No. 8 Mousumi Paul whatever they do tomorrow will be a bonus.