Allahabad’s Maan upsets third seed

Allahabad’s Maan Kesarwani hogged the limelight even on the opening day of the main round of the Shashank Shekhar Singh Memorial AITA Championship Series, stunning third seed Hardik Malik in a first round match here on Monday.

An agile Maan outclassed Hardik of New Delhi 8-3 in the under-16 boys category. Dominating the encounter from the very beginning, Maan surprised his rival with perfect cross-court volleys, at the synthetic surface at the Vijayantkhand stadium.

Maharashtra’s Anup Bangargi too caused a flutter, outplaying eighth seed local challenger Ambitious Goldsmith 8- 3, whereas hosts Tarun Randhawa saved three match points to beat Aditya Saraswat 8-6 in the tiebreak in other first round match.

RESULTS Boys under-16 (first

round): Vaibhav Singh Bisht bt Om Yadav 8-0; Shrikant Thakur bt Manuvendra Rawat (Guj) 8-1; Harihaswantha Bokka (Ts) bt Arjun Sharma 8-5; Umakant Singh bt Faraz Shakir 8-5; Maan Kesrarwani bt Hardik Malik (Dli) 8-3; Tarun Randhawa bt Aditya Saraswat 8-7 (6); Yash Verma bt Mohit Mishra 8-3; Shreejit Sen (Mah) bt Siddharth Kumar 8-0; Vansh Yadav bt Maanvendra Rawat (Guj) 8-1; Aryaman Mehta bt Beataman Kumar 8-3; Shubhendra Bhadauriya bt Arka Banerjee (WB) 8-5; Samit Kesari bt Amit Kumar 8-4; Anup Bangargi (Mah) bt Ambitious Goldsmith 8-3; Shashi Kant Thakur bt Jeffin Lourduraj (TN) 8-4; Jeevesh Pandey bt Lakshya Tikko 8-7 (5); Kanav Goel

(WB) bt Daksh Kumar Singh 8-3. Girls under-16 (first

round): Vaishanvi Adkar (Mah) bt Faiza Shakir 8-0; Meenal Singh bt Naina Yadav 8-0; Nivedita Shankar (KL) bt Shreya Gupta 8-0; Prashansha Srivastava (Bih) bt Tania Jamal (WB) 8-2; Arshia Ahmed got w/o from Kalpana Yadav; Nishta got w/o from Vaishanavi Yadav; Avishi Saxsena bt Purva Bajpai 8-0.