Jodhpur: The domination of Maharashtra boys in the sub-junior section was evident when as many as eight of them made it to the main draw of the National Ranking (Central Zone) Table Tennis championships at the Gaushala Indoor Stadium here today.

As for the sub-junior girls, a clear picture will emerge only after the third round group matches later this evening. But it seemed a smoothing sailing for some of the girls who are the regulars on the circuit.

With as many as 32 and 24 groups in the boys’ and girls’ sections, respectively, it was abound to be a hectic day for the sub-junior paddlers who had to play match after match with very little break in between. Nevertheless, the enthusiastic bunch of players, representing 22 states and 14 institutions, went through theirs tasks as if they were robots with the limitation of 10 tables to conduct the championships.

Yet, some of the group matches went to the wire with paddlers fighting it out against their opponents for only the group leaders were eligible to qualify for the main draw. This was where the Maharashtra boys excelled over their rivals with four each of of North Bengal and Tamil Nadu boys securing their berths. As for the hosts, the Petroleum Sports Promotion Board Academy came to their rescue with three of them—Manav Thakkar, Charag Kapoor and Z.K. Gogoi entering the round of 32.

Varun Gupta of UP, placed in group 4, was taken the distance by Andhra Pradesh’s Sai Tejesh before the former winning 12-10, -11, 2-11, 11-4, 11-4 to make the grade. Similarly, Rahul Krishna of Tamil Nadu had to stick it out of Subham Amre of Maharashtra. The Tamil Nadu boy won 5-11, 11-7, 11-9, 7-11, 12-10 in a grurlling fight that went for about 50 minutes.

There were quite a few other matches went the full distance but most of them were in a losing cause as Maharashtra’s Rutvik Pandrirkar despite winning 3-2 against Wesley D Rosario of Goa could not make it to the main draw. But for Chirag Kapoor of PSPBA the first match he played against Sandeep Choudhary of UP was too crucial as he won 3-2 after being down 0-2. He played brilliantly in the third game taking it at 11-4 to launch an overall attack against Sandeep. That paid dividends for him as he took the next two at 11-7, 11-9 to wrap it up in his favour

By Indian Sports News Network