Howrah, Oct 23 (IANS) Delhis Yashansh Malik defeated Deepit Rajesh Patil of Maharashtra 4-2 to enter the final of the Youth Boys singles in the UTT National Ranking (East Zone) Table Tennis Championships at the Howrah Indoor Stadium here on Wednesday.
He will now take on Jeet Chandra in the final on Thursday as the Haryana lad enjoyed a walkover from Delhi’s Payas Jain who, after spending a couple of tense days, left for Delhi to catch the flight to Poland to participate in the World Cadet Challenge.
With uncertainty lingering on Payas’ visa to Poland, his mindset was understandable, especially after compatriot Yashaswini Ghorpade had left the Indian shores a couple of days before for the vital training before the Cadet Challenge event, beginning from Saturday at Wladyslawoo.
Payas had booked his slot after winning a silver medal at Ulaanbaatar during the Asian Junior championships.
Yet, the third seed paddler kept himself in the reckoning here and emphatically beat Rajasthan’s Anukram Jain 4-0 to enter the semi-finals before giving the walkover.
But Yashansh Malik ensured he made up for his teammate when he defeated Deepit Patil in a tense game as both matched each other’s strokes. Yet the lanky Maharashtra boy made some crucial errors which helped the Delhi boy’s cause immensely, especially in the fourth game to put Yashansh 3-1 up.
Though he lost the next game, he stopped his Maharashtra rival two points short to secure his spot in the final.
Earlier, Deepit upset top-seed Manush Shah 4-3 in a gruelling quarterfinal. The Gujarat left-hander, the favourite to win the title here, made a fantastic comeback after trailing 0-3 before levelling the score. But Deepit made the most of his rival’s mistakes in the decider to romp home the winner.
In the semi-finals, top-seeded Prapti Sen sent Kaushani Nath packing with a 4-1 verdict and Moumita Datta scored a similar win over Shruti to enter the finals.
In the quarterfinals, Prapti had no inhibitions about her game plan when she beat Premangi Ghosh of the Railways. Moumita won rather easily against Surbhi Patwari of West Bengal (4-1) while Kaushani Nath, found a tough opponent in Tamil Nadu’s Yashini Sivasankar.
The latter, who was comfortably placed at 3-1 squandered the advantage to let Kaushani take the initiative in the last three games to reach the semis. In the fourth quarterfinal, left-handed Shruti Amrute of Railways accounted for Tamil Nadu’s Selenadeepti Selvakumar 4-3 after a well-fought match.
–IANS
dm/kk/bg