Panchkula: Haryana’s Arnav is the lone padder to enter the knockout stage of the Youth Boys Under-11 in the UTT National Ranking Table Tennis Championships at the Tau Devi Lal Indoor Stadium today. As many as 33 boys entered the fray, and Arnav was a lucky loner to be through, thanks to the two walkovers in Group 25.
In contrast, two Haryana girls—Avni Dua and Avyanna Phalaswal—topped their groups to make it to the main draw.
Except for a few latter groups, all in the top groups qualified for the second stage. In the Girls’ groups, too, the players in top groups held sway to advance. Also, a few lucky padders moved up because of the walkovers.
Arnav was a part of Group 25, with four players in it. But he had an opponent in Mehul Chhabra from Chandigarh, the only tie to play for and win. Arnav took a comfortable 2-0 lead before letting Mehul pull one back in the third. But that was not enough for the Chandigarh boy as Arnav wrapped it up 11-6, 11-9, 8-11, 17-15. His struggle in the fourth game was visible, but he held his nerves and survived five game points to make the most of two walkovers from Soumik Deb of West Bengal and Tanveer Singh from Maharashtra.
Karan Kashyap of Maharashtra displaced V. Mithran of Tamil Nadu from the top perch in Group 14 and qualified. Though Jasmay Sehgal was the whipping boy in the group from Haryana, Karan played superbly to control the match against group topper Mithran. He lost the first and fourth games but did well to keep him in the match to win 11-7, 9-11, 7-11, 11-7, 11-9 to sail through. Earlier, Karan won 3-0 against Jasmay.
Placed second in Group 17, Dhruv Bhambhani of Gujarat accounted for Aviral Chhabra from Haryana and Malhaar Talwarkar from Maharashtra to see his name on the qualifiers’ list.
Avni Dua’s ranking placed her on top of Group 8, and the Haryana girl justified her place with wins over Trish Surana from Chandigarh with 11-8, 11-3, 11-4, and then beat Gauranshi Uppal from Punjab 11-4, 11-6, 11-3 to earn a place in the knockout stage.
Avyanna followed Avni from Group 16, defeating Swarnama Jain 11-8, 13-11, 11-7 before consolidating her qualification position with a triumph over Anika Aggarwal of Delhi 11-2, 11-9, 11-6. There were no surprise winners in the Girls section, as group leaders went through their motions to advance.
Both the U-11 Boys and Girls will play one round of matches in the knockout, which begins with the round of 32.
In the U-13 category, the Boys and Girls will play two rounds today, and after the third round tomorrow, the qualifiers will emerge.
-TTFI
