Snehit slays top seeds to enter semis

Tribune News Service

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Panchkula, February 22

At the UTT 82nd National Table Tennis National TT C’ships being held at Tau Devi Lal Stadium, Sector 3, SFR Snehit, 20, had a dream run to reach the semifinals.

The Telangana boy first ousted defending champion Harmeet Desai 4-0 and then accounted for sixth seeded Sushmit Sriram 4-1 in the quarterfinals.

Down 0-1, he was looking for a turning point after managing to deuce. The umpire reversed a wrong call to award the point to Snehit that put him 11-10 up, and from there the Telangana boy took control against Sriram. Snehit logged 8-11 12-10 11-9 11-8 11-3 over Sriram.

In other quarterfinal matches, top-seed A Sharath Kamal toyed with Anothny Amalraj to win 4-1. Kamal defeated Anthony Amalraj 11-8 11-3 5-11 13-11 11-2. G Sathiyan won his tie against Sanil Shetty 11-9 11-9 11-13 11-8 11-6 whereas Manav Thakkar blanked Ronit Bhanja 11-7 12-10 10-12 12-10 11-6.

Earlier, in the pre-quarterfinals, Kamal defeated Sougata Sarkar 7-11 11-7 11-9 9-11 11-9 11-5, Amalraj outplayed Soumyajit Ghosh 9-11 12-10 9-11 11-8 11-8 11-5, Ronit Bhanja defeated Sudhanshu Grover 13-11 7-11 6-11 11-7 9-11 11-8 15-13, Thakkar ousted Nitin Thiruvengadam 11-9 8-11 11-5 11-9 11-5 and Snehit defeated Desai 11-9 11-7 11-9 11-5. Sriram defeated Arjun Ghosh 6-11 11-8 8-11 8-11 12-10 11-9 11-9, Shetty outplayed Sarthak Gandhi 11-4 7-11 8-11 11-7 11-8 11-7 and Sathiyan defeated Manush Shah 11-8 12-14 11-9 11-8 13-11 in other matches.