Snehit slays top seeds to enter semis

Tribune News Service

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.