Panaji (Goa), March 27: Padasak Tanviriyavechakul from Thailand has been top-seeded in the Junior Boys singles while it is his compatriot Tamolwan Khetkhuan who has been accorded the top slot in the Junior Girls singles in the ongoing 2014 Indian Junior and Cadet Open Table Tennis Championships at the Mukherjee Stadium today.

Incidentally the Thais, who arrived yesterday, are competing only in the singles events and going by their form and better rankings they remain the hot favourites to win the two titles as well as the top prize purses from the $8,000 event.

The Thai girl, who has got a first-round bye, will be seen in action after her qualification but Padasak who was not so fortunate, had no difficulty in putting it across Indian Birdie Boro to stamp this authority. The Thai won 11-6, 11-8, 11-8, 11-4 to send the right signals to his rivals.

The southpaw, who qualified for the Youth Olympics from the RTN series in France, was too good with his scorching forehand as well as counters. Birdie, on the other hand, was good in patches but failed to match up to his Thai rival.

Out of the 13 Indian boys, only five made it to the main draw, but just three survived the first round grind to go through to the quarterfinals. Abhishek Yadav defeated Yin Jin Yuan of Singapore 4-2 (11-8, 8-11, 2-11, 11-3, 11-8, 11-4) and will run into Iran’s Hamed Basht Bavi. The latter was stretched by India’s Nishaad Shah which the former won 4-2.

But two matches stood out for good rallies and intensity as Anirban Ghosh overcame a stiff Ming Han Maxxe Tay of Singapore 4-2 (11-6, 11-7, 7-11, 10-12, 13-11, 11-3) and Utkarsh Gupta downed Arman Hajiei of Iran with a similar verdict (11-6, 11-9, 11-4, 7-11, 7-11, 11-7).

What marked Utkarsh’s game was that the Delhi boy, despite leading comfortably at 3-0, was pushed to the corner by his Iranian rival who took the next game to give him a jolt. But Utkarsh prevailed over him by winning the sixth game. He will take on Kirill Gerassimenko, the qualifier of the RTN series here, in the quarterfinal while Anirban meets Iran’s Soroosh Amiri Nia.

In the Junior Girls, Aishwarya Pathak and her sister Soundarya entered the quarterfinals with similar score line of 4-1 against Sagarika Mukherjee and Archana Kamath, respectively. In fact, the siblings even scored victories of 11-9, 11-8, 5-11, 11-8, 11-7 each, indicating a pattern to their games. No. 2 seed Suthirtha Mukherjee will take on Soundarya while Aishwarma meet Ayhika Mukherjee, who got a first-round bye, like Suthritha, in the main draw. Oishwarya Deb too received bye in the first round along with Riti Shankar, who takes on top seed Tamolw tomorrow.

With limited entries in both the Cadet Boys and Girls sections, the main draw events, which start with quarterfinals, are slated to begin only tomorrow. The Cadet Boys section has three foreigners Poh Shao Feng Ethan and Tan Lucas (both Singapore) and one Swede in Filip Karlsson in the main draw with three Indians filling the other slots.

However, the Cadet Girls main draw looks to be an India dominated one with five Indians and lone Singaporean in Hui il Tay. In other words, the hosts are assured of a few medals with Archana Kamath being seeded No. 1 with Shruti Amrute behind her at No. 2. But only Archana has been given the luxury of a first-round bye as she will directly seeded into the semifinals.