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North zone table tennis championships: Soham, Syndrela walk away with youth Under-13 titles
Soham Mukherjee and Syndrela Das of West Bengal lifted the youth Under-13 boys’ and girls’ titlesin the UTT National Ranking North Zone Table Tennis Championships at Sports Complex, Sector 78, Mohali
Soham Mukherjee and Syndrela Das of West Bengal lifted the youth Under-13 boys’ and girls’ titles, respectively, in the UTT National Ranking North Zone Table Tennis Championships at the Sports Complex at Sector 78 on Thursday.
Soham defeated Pratiyush Bauva 4-0, while Syndrela struggled to beat Kavya Bhatt, also from Maharashtra, 4-3. If the boys final was a damp squib, the girls final was thrilling with the Bengal girl clinching it in the decider.
As for the quarterfinals, the matches were more of a one-sided affair. The boys’ semifinals had some thrilling moments with the winners fighting hard to wrest the initiative. Soham Mukherjee dropped two games before subduing Debraj Bhattacharjee 4-2 in the all-Bengal first semi-final clash. In the second, Pratiyush from Maharashtra followed suit to beat Rupam Sardar of West Bengal 4-2.
In the girls’ semifinals, Kavya Bhatt defeated Nandhini Reena 4-1, while Syndrela Das blanked out Ananya Muralidharan 4-0.
At least three pre-quarterfinals went down to the wire and Cadet National champion from Tamil Nadu, Nikkhil Menon, became the first victim of unseeded Sarthak Arya of Delhi. Despite the top seed leading 2-1, the Delhi boy’s assertive play rendered Nikkhil searching for his counters.
Sounav Barman from West Bengal, down 1-2, recovered to beat Swapnanil Dutta of Assam 3-2, while Debraj Bhattacharjee, also from Bengal, defeated Bhaskar Singh Sugra for a similar score.
