As expected, Petroleum men and women kept their hold over the trophies by showing the young challengers from Airports Authority of India (AAI) that they still have some distance to cover at the senior level of the all India inter-institutional table tennis championship here on Tuesday.
By the time Petroleum finished the task on job with 3-0 scorelines, the AAI could only manage to win a game in the men’s clash and two in the women’s title-match.
This was the 23rd successful title-triumph for the Petroleum men and 22nd for the ladies in this championship, ranked second only to the National championship in the domestic table tennis calendar.
Rio-Olympic bound Manika Batra and Soumyajit Ghosh were chosen to play the third singles and both struggled in varying degrees.
If Manika could get her bearings only late in the second game, before taming Frenaz Chipia who raced away with the first game at 11-4, Ghosh had issues with the bounce of the ball and the conditions even though he managed to beat Anirban Ghosh in straight games.
“I am training with a different brand of TT balls with seam. These are seamless balls and move much faster. I was struggling to gauge the bounce correctly for the better part of the match. The trouble is, after doing all the adjustment over the next couple of days here, I will have to go back to training with the seam-balls that will be used in Rio,” said Ghosh.
Before Ghosh’s triumph wrapped up the proceedings, G. Sathiyan was off to a dream start against S. Sushmit, who did have his moments in the next two games. Left-hander Sanil Shetty shook off the starting trouble and made apt amends for dropping the first game to Sarthak Gandhi.
In the women’s finals, K. Shamini shook off her inconsistent form to beat rising talent Archana Kamath and gave Petroleum the start it needed. Mouma, preparing for her second Olympic appearance in 12 years, proved too strong for young Ayhika Mukherjee and won the big points almost by choice.
The action now moves to individual championships in singles for men and women, besides the three doubles events.
Final results (Team championship): Men: Petroleum beat Airports Authority of India 3-0 (G. Sathiyan bt S. Sushmit 11-1, 11-8, 11-8; Sanil Shetty bt Sarthak Gandhi 5-11, 11-8, 11-8, 11-6; Soumyajit Ghosh bt Anirban Ghosh 11-6, 11-9, 11-9).
Women: Final: Petroleum beat Airports Authority of India 3-0 (K. Shamini bt Archana Kamath 11-7, 6-11, 11-5, 12-10; Mouma Das bt Ayhika Mukherjee 11-9, 11-7, 11-9, Manika Batra bt Frenaz Chipia 4-11, 11-8, 11-4, 11-6).
