It was a day of some great upsets as unheralded Wesley Do Rosario of Haryana put up a solid display to engineer the early exit of top-seeded Manav Thakkar from the men’s singles of the UTT-South Zone National-ranking table tennis championships at the Jimmy George Indoor stadium here on Friday.
The Goa-born Rosario, after losing the first game, came back strongly and held on bravely to take the match the distance. He eventually came up trumps with a fine 3-11, 11-9, 7-11, 10-12, 11-9, 11-9, 11-8 win.
Unsettled
The round-of-64 match had started well for the top seed, but he was unsettled by his left-handed rival’s aggression in the second.
Thakkar, however, seemed to be getting back into his own taking the lead, but Rosario bounced back to reel off the last three games.
In the round of 32 match, later in the day, Rosario once again sparkled as he mowed down Mandar Hardikar (Maharashtra) 7-11, 11-7, 11-7, 12-14, 11-8, 11-9.
The other upset in the same section was brought about by Soumyajit Ghosh. Ghosh, on a comeback trail, snuffed out seventh-seed Arjun Ghosh to book a place in the pre-quarterfinals.
Second seed Sudhanshu Grover, third seed Siddesh Pande, fourth seed Sanish Shett, No. 5, 6 and 8, Jeet Chandra, Harmeet Desai and Sushmit Sriram also made it to the pre-quarterfinals.
In the women’s section, after a number of byes in the first round, the second round saw five seeded players biting the dust.
Third seed Sagarika Mukherjee (Railways) was hounded out by former National champion Shamini Kumaresan 11-5, 11-7, 7-11, 11-8, 11-13, 9-11, 11-5, while No. 4 Divya Deshpande was taken out by Takame Sarkar 11-4, 9-11, 11-8, 9-11, 11-9, 11-9.
Fifth seed Sreeja Akulla, No. 6 Pooja Sahasrabudhe and eighth seed Reeth Rishya also lost to Poymantee Baisya, Shruti Amurte and Senhora D’Souza respectively.
As a result only top seed Sutirtha Mukherjee, second seed Madhurika Patkar and seventh seed Ayhika Mukerjee remain to fight out the round of 16 to be played on Saturday.
