By Our Reporter
SHILLONG, April 20: The men’s and women’s teams of the Petroleum Sports Promotion Board (PSPB) entered the finals of the 83rd Senior National and Inter-State Table Tennis Championships at the SAI Indoor Stadium in NEHU on Wednesday.
The PSPB men’s team beat the Railways and while the women’s team got better of the Bengal A women’s team, with similar scores of 3-0.
In the other two semi-finals, Maharashtra A women defeated Tamil Nadu Table Tennis Association 3-0 and their men beat Bengal A 3-2 in what turned out to be an edge-of-the-seat encounter.
The Railway Sports Promotion Board (RSPB) women, following the footpath of Haryana, made their unceremonious exit in the quarterfinals. But what was more shocking was the elimination of runners-up Delhi and bronze medallist Telangana in the men’s team events, paving the way for RSPB and Maharashtra A to enter the medal rounds. Maharashtra A’s first thrashed Delhi 3-0, and the Railmen steamrolled Telangana 3-2 in a thrilling quarterfinal.
The women’s team finals tomorrow will be held at 2:30 pm, followed by the men’s team finals at 4 pm, with the medal ceremony for both to take place at 5 pm. Preceding this, will be the start of the mixed doubles from 9 am and women’s singles from 11:30 am.
Diya Chitale, Swastika Ghosh and Anannya Basak led their team into the final, as did PSPB, downing runners-up Bengal A with an identical margin.
Strengthened by the return of Manika Batra, PSPB ran through Bengal A quickly. Kaushani Nath of Bengal, however, put up a good fight and forced Manika on the back foot for the first time. In the end, it did not matter as Manika won the second rubber after Archana had put PSPB 1-0 up. The third rubber was a formality as Reeth Rishya outsmarted Moumita Dutta, winning in straight games.
In the men’s quarterfinals, Delhi wilted under the weight of Deepit R Patil, Siddhesh Pandey and Jash Modi. Modi played brilliantly against Yashansh Malik to make it 3-0 for Maharashtra.
In the second rubber, Siddhesh never allowed any liberty to Payas Jain, who has not only improved his world rankings in U-19 Boys but has quite a few international medals to his credit. But it was Deepit’s hard-fought win against Sudhanshu Grover that gave their team the initial push.