Within a few hours of landing here, favourite Sharath Kamal warmed up with an expected victory over one of his practice-partners, S. Karthikeyan, for a place in the men’s third round of National ranking table tennis championship on Tuesday.
Looking keen to gain some extra on-court time, Sharath was in no hurry to neither finish a point nor the match. As is his wont, Sharath was considerate to his younger rival before posting a 12-10, 12-10, 11-8, 11-4 result at Panchkula’s Devi Lal Stadium.
“Since the table was playing too fast, I had to find a way to keep the ball in play. You keep finding ways to adjust to the faster pace of these tables. I will have to find practice time to get better for the matches ahead,” revealed the nine-time National champion who next plays qualifier Shivam Das.
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On a day when the qualifying phase sent 64 men and 40 women into the main draws, Payas Jain celebrated the news of becoming World No. 1 spot in the under-17 section by posting a confidence-boosting 13-11, 11-7, 11-8, 12-10 triumph over 23-year-old Sarthak Gandhi. He will take on left-handed 13th seed Jubin Kumar in the third round.
Rosario stuns Nandi
Though most matches produced expected winners, Haryana’s Wesley Do Rosario knocked out seasoned Railway campaigner Anirban Nandi 9-11, 2-11, 11-8, 12-10, 11-9, 11-9.
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Second seed Manav Thakkar, former National champions Soumyajit Ghosh and Sanil Shetty, seeded three and four, along with lower seeds Jeet Chandra, Sudhanshu Grover, Abhishek Yadav, Arjun Ghosh, defending champion Anthony Amalraj, Ronit Bhanja, Sourav Saha and F.R. Snehit advanced as anticipated.
Mudit Dani, who got a walkover against Parth Virmani to reach the main draw, won against Uttarakhand's Gautam Dhruvansh in five sets and set up a third-round clash against 14th seed Manush Shah.
In the women’s section, where the seeded players join the action on Wednesday morning, young Yashaswini Ghorpade took out Bengal’s Munmun Ghosh for a place against Lakshita Narang in the second round.