Maharashtra paddlers reap rich medal haul at UTT National meet

by Priya Jadhav

Sonepat: Maharashtra's young table tennis players gave a good display of themselves, picking up four medals in the cadet, junior and sub-junior categories at the UTT National Ranking Table Tennis Championships (North Zone) at the DPS Hall in Sonepat, on Monday.

Dhruv Shah (cadet boys), Swastika Ghosh (junior girls), Taneesha Kotecha (sub-junior girls) picked up a silver each, while Jennifer Varghese fetched a bronze in the cadet giArls category.

It was a collective show of display from the Maharashtra paddlers, with three of them storming into the finals. 

In the junior girls final, second seed Swastika gave a tough fight to top seed Anusha Kutumbale of Madhya Pradesh before going down 2-4.

The sub-junior girls crown went to Haryana's Suhana Saini who defeated Taneesha of Maharashtra 4-1. Taneesha began well and had her moments in the game but was undone by Suhana, who slowly had the match under her grip. 

In cadet boys final, Tamil Nadu’s Umesh Kumar emerged the winner after he defeated Dhruv Shah of Maharashtra 4-1, while Diya Bramhachary of West Bengal downed state mate Nandini Saha 4-2 for the cadet girls crown.

Umesh opened up a 3-0 lead but Dhruv fought back. The Maharashtra boy took the fourth game and challenged his opponent in the last game too, but the gap was too wide to cover as he settled for a silver.

In cadet girls, Jennifer Varghese of Maharashtra earned a bronze following a hard-fought 2-3 loss to West Bengal’s Nandini Saha in the semifinals.