Mixed fortunes for Manushree on opening day
Indore, June 19: Manushree Patil, former sub-junior national champion from Maharashtra, recovered from her opening round loss to win her second round match, but her progress hinges on her 3rd round performance during the group stages of the women singles in the 11Even Sports National Ranking (Central Zone) Table Tennis Championships at Abhay Prashad Indoor Stadium on Monday, according to information received here.
After going down 1-3 to West Bengal’s Priyadharshini Das in her first round outing, she struggled to post a 3-2 win over Rajasthan’s Nikita Rautela in the second round. Manushree, however, would have to win against Rittika Kundu of North Bengal in the third round if she hoped to seal the second spot from group 24 to get into the main draw.
The Maharashtra girl, trying to get her feet in, could not match the guile of the West Bengal girl and surrendered meekly without much of a fight. However, in the second round one thought she would play authoritatively but her opponent from Rajasthan had different ideas and, despite dropping her first game, came back nicely to lead 2-1. Though Manushree won the third game to bring the score level, it was a touch-and-go affair in the fourth as Nikita deuced to give a scare to Manushree, who won 11-8, 9-11, 9-11, 11-6, 12-10, much to her relief.
The worst case scenario was Ashlesha Trehan’s performance. Given a pride of place in group 27 as leader, she lost both her matches to Kushi Viswanath of Karnataka and Seraha Jacob of Kerala with an identical margin of 2-3. Sanhya Sehgal of Haryana had a win-loss opening to her campaign in the group stages as she lost her first round to Krittika Malik of Delhi 0-3 and won 3-2 against Kaushani Nath of West Bengal.
But for these minor hiccups, most other group leaders went through their motions to seal their place with comfortable wins in the first two rounds. All 31 groups are awaiting the second winners to join the eight seeded women players who will open their account tomorrow when the main draw begins.