PSPB teams book final spots
Petroleum Sports Promotion Board men joined their women paddlers in the team finals of the AAI 48th all India inter- institutional championships, blanking out Dena Bank 3- 0 in Coimbatore on Thursday.
The summit clash on Friday will see PSPB clashing with Railway Sports Promotion Board, who beat AAI 3- 1.
Petroleum win was a foregone conclusion against Dena Bank but what surprised everyone was the way Anirban Ghosh emerged as the saviour for RSPB, winning both his singles and before that Anirban Nandi providing the impetus through a hard- fought win over young Ronit Bhanja.
Earlier, PSPB women cleaned up Railways Sports Promotion Board 3- 1 in the first semi- finals while hosts Airports Authority of India downed Reserve Bank of India, also by a similar margin.
PSPB had a nice flow going in their favour when Mouma Das and Manika Batra gave a comfortable 2- 0 lead as they beat Shruti Amrute and Sagarika Mukherjee.
But the Railways veteran, Anindita Chakraborty, stopped their free- flowing movement with a shock defeat of Pooja Sahasrabudhe.
The latter was unable to keep the ball on the table while Anindita did exactly that to outsmart her PSPB rival. Pooja did start suspiciously before winning the opening game 16- 14. Probably, it was there she lost her steam as well as motivation when Anindita equalled with ease. With a new- found confidence, the Railways paddler took the next game rather easily before nailing it in the fifth to take the rubber. But Manika, who earlier beat Sagarika, beat left- hander Shruti to put her team in the final.