Day 4: 17th Junior Asian Table Tennis Championships

New Delhi, July 23: It was a bad draw as far as the Indian boys were concerned, all right. Yet all the four couldn’t have asked for a better occasion to make a strong statement in the NCC 17th Junior Asian Table Tennis Championships at the Tyagaraj Stadium on Saturday. All but Soumyajit Ghosh, who entered the pre-quarterfinals, had to face the Chinese fury while Ghosh was drawn to take on South Korean Jae Jun Cho. Nobody gave the Indians even a grain of chance against either the Chinese or the Korean. And the end result was along expected line-they bowled out in the pre-quarters-but what one saw was the rare fight from the Indians that even surprised the Chinese.   No doubt, the Indians made things difficult for their opponents but where they lost the matches while their opponents won was when the Indians showed their other side-the mental block of facing superior opponents.   If Ghosh had run into a tough opponent in the South Korean Cho and lost 0-4 (11-13, 10-12, 11-13, 3-11), the others had at least the chance of toppling the Chinese after having run them very closely. G. Sathyan, for instance, went down 3-4 against Gaoyuan Lin, the top seed, 5-11, 11-7, 13-11, 7-11, 6-11, 11-9, 6-11. Harmeet Desai also lost to Wu Jiaji 2-4 (7-11, 11-9, 71-11, 12-10, 7-11, 8-11) after a grueling fight which made the Chinese sweat for every single point. But Sourav Saha was the biggest culprit of them all, after having led 3-0, 7-0 in the seventh game, and allowing Hang Yin to win in a most bizarre manner. Saha had all sewn it up nicely as he went for broke in the fourth game. But then the Chinese showed the stuffing he is made of and staged a remarkable comeback. He not only took the fourth game but from there he started demolishing every design of Saha. In the decider, however, he seemed to have lost somewhere, thanks to his defensive tactics. But Saha failed seize the advantage and let him take the initiative.   Leading 7-0, the Chinese started attacking and Saha started crumbling, slowly but steadily. While the Chinese managed seven straight points, Saha managed just three more before the former said enough is enough to shut him out, leaving Saha was forlorn and glum-faced. Desai, on the other hand, played an excellent match often surprising his Chinese opponent with backhand down the line shots and his close to the net serves. But in the end it was his opponent’s perseverance that put paid to Desai’s ambitions. Nevertheless, all the Indians can take heart from the fact that unlike in the past, they had adequately scared the Chinese. In the girls section, Manika Batra was the lone Indian to make the pre-quarter finals but she lost to her Japanese rival. Earlier, the Indian boys gave a good account of themselves in the qualifying phase by maintaining a cent per cent record for the host. Sathiyan made it without dropping a game in three matches, Soumyajit Ghosh dropped just one game in three outings while Harmeet Desai gave away one game in two encounters. Sourav Saha topped a three-way tie by virtue of his best ratio of games won and lost. Among the girls, Manika Batra advanced as per expectations by blanking three lesser ranked rivals while Charvi Kawle made up for the surprise exit of Mallika Bhandarkar. Charvi won both her league games but Mallika surrendered in straight set to Korean qualifier Kang Haneul. Anushree Hazra, K. Spoorthy and Reeth Rishya Tennison failed to survive the league. In the cadet section, Abhishek Yadav and Utkarsh Gupta expectedly made it to the boys’ knockout phase while Birdie Boro, Lalrin Puia and Anirban Ghosh failed to make the mark. Alappuza-based 14-year-old Maria Rony made the most a good draw and beat rivals from Nepal and Srilanka to become the only Indian to make the main draw. K. Spoorthy, Priyadarshini Das, Ayhika Mukherjee, Anuska Dutta and Naina succumbed in the league stage.