India A and B teams bow out after good fight

 

Panaji (Goa), March 25: The hosts’ junior boys, despite a good fight, bowed out of the 2014 Indian Junior and Cadet Open Table Tennis Championships on the opening day at the Mukherjee Stadium here today.

 

Taking advantage of being the hosts, they fielded two teams—India A and India B—in this section but both failed to grab the opportunity in the face of very good opposition from teams like Singapore’s A and B teams, Iran, Sweden besides a mix-team from Iran and Kazakhstan.

 

India A, which had the likes of Abhishek Yadav, Utkarsh Gupta and Birdie Boro, first failed to match speed and guile of Singapore A’s Lam Zheng Jie Edric and Yin Jing Uyan and went down 2-3 and then against Iran’s Amiri Nia Soroosh, who is in a great form, and Basht Bavi Hameed for a similar score line.

 

This paved the way for both Singapore A and Iran to make it to the second stage of the championships from Group1, while it will be the mix-team of Iran-Kazakhstan and one other team from Group 2 that will make the cut. The match latter in the day between Sweden and Singapore B will see the winners qualifying as the second team from the group.

 

As for India B, consisting of Anirban Ghosh, Nishaad Shah and Siddhant Sunil Parekh lost both their matches to the Iran-Kazakh combine and Sweden 1-3.

 

The Indian boys, particularly, Abhishek Yadav played superbly to restore parity twice. He first defeated Singapore’s Lim heng Jie Edric 11-7, 2-11, 11-9, 12-10 after Utkrsh Gupta lost the opening rubber to Yin Jing Yuan 6-11, 5-11, 3-11. Then the Singapore doubles combination of Lim and Yin defeated Boro and Yadav in a thrilling five-setter (5-11, 5-11, 11-7, 11-7, 8-11).

 

Yet, a tiring Yadav was up to the task in his reverse singles against Yin, winning the rubber 11-5, 8-11, 7-11, 12-10, 11-8 to level the score. But Gupta lost the crucial last rubber to Lim in an extended match that went to the wire. The Singapore player won 11-4, 11-7, 5-11, 5-11, 12-10 in a match that lasted 40 minutes and saw quite a few rallies from both the players. In the end, the Singapore players proved too good with long-lasting stamina which made the difference between them and the hosts.

 

The case was no different against Iran in the morning. Abhishek Yadav played his role to perfection, winning his first singles against Basht Bavi Hamed (11-7, 11-6, 10-12, 11-6) as well as the reverse singles Amiri Nia Soroosh (11-9, 5-11, 5-11, 11-5, 11-7) to make the score 2-2 after the two Indians lost their doubles. But, Utkarsh Gupta, in what was to be a repeat latter against Singapore A, went down fighting in another thriller. Basht prevailed over Gutpa with a 12-14, 12-10, 4-11, 11-6, 11-9 triumph to go through to the next stage.

 

Though Anirban Ghosh put up a great fight against Iran-Kazakh mix team, the resistance came too late in the day while it was more or less a one-sided affair for India B against Sweden. Here too, Anirban played well to beat Iwarsson Hannes 11-4, 11-2, 11-5 in his first singles. But he lost to Sweden’s No. 1 player Elias Ranefur 11-9, 6-11, 9-11, 5-11 to pull the curtains down on India B.

 

However, India A team (Aishwarya Pathak and Abinaya Ramesh) in the junior girls kept their date with destiny by beating Kazakh-Malaysia combination team and India B team (Shruti Vijay Amrute and Archana Giri Kamath). They have two matches against Singapore and India C and the results of which will determine the eventual titlist in this round-robin group.

 

Like in junior girls section, in the Cadet Boys India have fielded three teams—the other two teams being Singapore and Sweden. India A (Manav Thakkar and Akaash Nath) have notched up wins over both India B (Snehit Suravajjula and Jeet Chandra) and India C (Neeldeep Das and Wesley Do Rosario). They have a match against both Singapore and Sweden and the top of the ladder team will win the championship.