Mouma eases into main draw

Tribune News Service

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Panchkula, July 7 

Commonwealth Games gold medallist Mouma Das had no difficulty what so ever to make it to the main draw of the National Ranking Table Tennis Championship (North Zone) here on Saturday.

Playing at Tau Devi Lal Stadium, the 34-year-old Petroleum Sports Promotion Board (PSPB) paddler got a walkover in her first group match against Karnataka’s Venkatesha M Spoorthi before she packed off Manisha Seal of Madhya Pradesh 11-4 11-9 11-6. 

Mouma got another walkover against Uttar Pradesh’s Tanu Gupta as she amassed six points to go atop her group and join the likes of Manika Batra, Sutirtha Mukherjee and Madhurika Patkar in the main draw. 

The trio, which was a part of the gold medal winning team in Gold Coast Games along with Mouma, has been given direct entry into the main draw on basis of their rankings.            

Another PSPB paddler, Archana Girish Kamath also made it to the main draw after demolishing MP’s Vandana Singh 11-6 11-7 11-8 and dropping just a single game against Pooja Sharma of Indian Audit and Accounts Department.   

Archana, who recently booked a ticket to Youth Olympics in Argentina, secured four points from two wins to lead her group.  

Unimpressive 

Meanwhile, former national champion Shamini Kumaresan, who was making a comeback after motherhood, kept herself in the reckoning with two wins from three matches to qualify as the second player from her group after Deepika Neelakandan of Tamil Nadu. 

Shamini lost her opening match 4-11 6-11 11-5 9-11 to Deepika but made the amends with an 11-9 12-10 12-10 win over North Bengal’s Neha Kumar in her second match. She came from a game down in her third group match to beat UP’s Tarushi Bansal 12-14 11-5 11-4 11-7 to stay alive in the competition.  

Her PSPB colleague and former national champion Poulomi Ghatak also moved into the main draw after beating UP’s Pooja Singh (11-5 11-3 12-10) and Rajasthan’s Iti Sharma (11-3 11-9 11-2). She, however, lost her last match 7-11 12-10 5-11 7-11 to Disha Hulawle of Maharashtra, who topped the group with six points.  

Though Shamini and Poulomi made it to the main draw, they looked jaded and it would be interesting to see how far the veteran players can go in the tournament.

The most interesting battle of the day was, meanwhile, fought between Diya Chitale. 

Chandigarh paddlers disappoint

Chandigarh girls continued to disappoint with their performance as none of the five paddlers in the fray in the senior category could make it to the main draw.  

While Paavan lost all her three matches to finish in the bottom heap of her group, Naina Suri was able to win just one of her three group matches. Deevanshi Chawla also dished out an unimpressive performance, losing two out of her three matches. 

Pareen Verma and Kalyani Kakar also failed to advance. 

The results were no different in the men’s category as four of the five Chandigarh players — Shaurya Raj, Sahil Sharma, Rishab Kumar and Saurabh Agnihotri — could not clear the initial hurdle. Divaksh Dawar was only one from the city to qualify for the main draw.