Tame exits for Nath, Mousumi
Akaash Nath and Shakreja Gourang failed to make the cut in the men’s singles main draw as did Mousumi Paul of PSPB in women singles on the second day of the 11Sports National Ranking ( West Zone) Table Tennis Championships at the Mhalunge- Balewadi Sports Complex in Pune on Saturday.
However, Anindita Chakraborty and Jignesh Jaiswal qualified for the knockout stage along with former national champion K. Shamini.
Nath, clubbed in Group 28 with three players, managed a solitary win against Assam’s Shankab Barua and a walkover against the third player who failed to make an appearance. This helped him with five points. But his tame loss to Harsh Sachnandani ( 11- 7, 14- 12, 11- 3) from Madhya Pradesh and the Assam boy, in turn, beating Harsh forced a three- way tie and the AAI boy was edged out by Barua on better points ratio. Thus both the paddlers from MP and Assam made it to the main draw.
Similarly, the Haryana boy Gourang lost two of his matches to Surajit Das of ESIC ( 0- 3) and Chhattisgarh’s Santtosh Araswilli ( 1- 3) while registering a lone 11- 6, 11- 8, 9- 11, 11- 8 win against Goa’s Dheeraj Rai.
On the other hand, Mousumi, who has a better track record, was pushed to the third spot in her group 10 as she notched up a single win ( 3- 0) over Meenushree Seal from MP while losing her first and second- round matches to Nikita Sarkar of North Bengal and Tamanna Saini of Delhi. The last two qualified for the second stage.
Other than these group matches, some group leaders found themselves reduced to the position of a second qualifier from the group. There were examples galore.