Table Tennis
National Ranking C'ships: Harmeet Desai top-seeded in men's category
Harmeet Desai will enter the UTT National Ranking Championships as the top seed as Sathiyan and Manush Shah withdraw.
Harmeet Desai continues his giant killing run at WTT Contender Lagos.
Indian paddler Harmeet Desai will enter the main draw of the second UTT National Ranking Championships as the top-seeded player. The tournament went underway on Saturday.
With Gnanasekaran Sathiyan and Manush Shah, the two top-ranked players not competing, Harmeet, who is third on the national ranking chart and the top-ranked Indian in the world, has got the top seeding.
Manav Thakkar and Achanta Sharath Kamal follow Harmeet in the seeding list and will be seen in action on Sunday when the main draw matches commence.
In the earlier qualification rounds on Saturday, PB Abhinand of Tamil Nadu took the top spot in Group 1 beating Delhi's Aadarsh Om Chhetri, 14-12, 11-6, 6-11, 11-5, and then subdued Kerala's AS Amal 11-9, 11-3, 11-2 to book his place in the second stage of the draw.
In other groups, top-ranked players took a step closer to securing qualification berths with a victory each.
In Group 3, Ranjith Benny had an impressive match against Vishesh Rastogi of Madhya Pradesh, winning 3-2 (11-8, 12-14, 6-11, 11-6, 11-4), which put him on par with former National junior champion Siddesh Pandey of Maharashtra, who defeated Rastogi 11-3, 11-1, 11-5.
The winner of the match between Pandey and Benny will qualify for the main draw from the group.
Anukram Jain of RSPB, Ali Mohammed of Telangana, and Surajit Das of Bengal faced tough challenges but managed to outwit their opponents to keep their qualification chances alive.
Anukram defeated Anshuman Hazarika of Assam 11-4, 11-5, 11-13, 12-10, while Ali Mohammed was pushed to the limit by Harish Kusel of Karnataka in their Group 13 clash.
However, Ali Mohammed made a remarkable comeback after being down 0-2, winning 9-11, 9-11, 11-9, 11-6, 11-5.
Surajit Das also faced a tough challenge from Abhinav K Murthy, another player from Karnataka, before emerging as a 3-11, 11-8, 7-11, 11-4, 14-12 winner.
In the women's singles category, the participants in the group have completed their first-round matches and will play two more rounds to determine the qualifiers.
