Three in a row for Sathiyan
Gnanasekaran Sathiyan defeated Harmeet Desai in the final to lift his third straight singles title
Gnanasekaran Sathiyan completed a hat- trick of singles titles when he beat Harmeet Desai 11- 9, 12- 14, 11- 7, 11- 7, 9- 11, 9- 11, 11- 7 in the AAI 48th all India inter- institutional championships in Coimbatore on Tuesday.
Sathiyan collected ` 80,000 for his win while Desai received ` 40,000.
Sathiyan won his first institutional title in 2014 at New Delhi.
He achieved the rare three- in-a-row feat as he won in 2016 at Jaipur, following it up with another at New Delhi in 2017 and the third on Tuesday.
Sathiyan, who beat the same opponent 4- 0 last year, found a different Harmeet in the final at the Bharathiar University Indoor Hall.
Desai made Sathiyan work hard for every point despite Sathiyan going 3- 1 up.
Once he levelled at 3- 3 it was anybody’s match with Harmeet gaining in confidence.
But Sathiyan led at least by four points after changeover at 5- 4, eventually winning 4- 3.
Archana Kamath lost in the women’s singles final but claimed two doubles titles. Divya Deshpande defeated Archana 11- 8, 11- 6, 7- 11, 3- 11, 1311, 5- 11, 11- 5 in the final.
Divya kept her cool in the decider and steadily increased her lead.
Archana gave away at least four service points, which benefited her opponent a great deal.
Divya received ` 70,000 for her efforts. Archana was down 0- 2 and 2- 3. She levelled 3- 3 to force the issue to the decider. But couldn’t get her act together in the deciding game.
In the women doubles final, Archana partnered the experienced Mouma Das to beat Ayhika Mukherjee and Priyadarsini Das 11- 2, 10- 12, 5- 11, 11- 7, 11- 8. She also combined with Manav Thakkar to beat the Sanil Shetty and Reeth Rishya pair in the mixed doubles final 11- 9, 6- 11, 7- 11, 11- 9, 11- 6.
In the men’s doubles final, Jeet Chandra and Siddesh Pande defeated Abhishek Yadav and SFR Snehit 3- 0.