By Our Reporter
Shillong, April 22: With the conclusion of the team events on Friday, day five of the 83rd Senior National Table Tennis Championship was devoted to doubles, and individual women’s and men’s singles events.
Meghalaya’s paddlers were involved in all three categories but experienced some agonising defeats at the SAI Indoor Stadium here on Saturday.
Meghalaya’s ace paddler Tanushree Das Gupta was leading by two games to love against Suhana N of Uttar Pradesh in their evening match-up but saw the lead overturned to lose 3-2, with the last game going 11-7 in favour of the UP paddler.
Meghalaya men’s doubles pairing of Yogesh Singh and Surangjit Dey also went down to Manipur 3-2 after leading 2-1 at one stage.
Dey, however, won one of his singles matches, while Anwesha Choudhury and Anubhav Dutta won a mixed doubles match against Goa on Friday.
Meanwhile, former national champions Archana Kamath, Sutirtha Mukherjee and Madhurika Patkar, taking the qualification route, entered the women’s singles main draw at the championships.
With the direct entry stipulations restricting only the top eight ranked players in the second stage of the singles events, all these players went through the first-stage process.
However, Sutirtha had to play out of her skin against Koushiki Dasgupta of Bengal to grab the lone spot. Pushed to the corner, Sutirtha mustered the courage to win the decider 11-6, 11-9, 13-15, 10-12, 12-10, after deuce.
But both Madhurika and Archana did not have to go through any such ordeal in their respective groups. The two former national champions won their group matches with identical 3-0 verdicts.
They will be joining the top-ranked players lying in wait when the main draw events begin tomorrow afternoon.