Harmeet, Shamini lift titles

It was an end-of-season bonanza for both Harmeet Desai and Shamini, who completed the year atop the podium and a big purse in the national ranking (East Zone) table tennis championships in Guwahati on Wednesday.

Harmeet, runner-up in the season-opening South Zone event at Chennai, outsmarted PSPB colleague Anthony Amalraj 4-1 in the men’s singles final. In the women’s title clash, Shamini won her first crown beating PSPB team mate Mouma Das 4-3 in a gripping final.

Harmeet had an indifferent season but made amends played with purpose. Though Amalraj won the first game, Harmeet picked up momentum from the second game and continued with it in a match that witnessed fast rallies and blistering backhands by both players. Both traded strokes and used the flanks well — some shots kissing the edges — but Desai seemed more determined on the day. It paid rich dividends when, despite missing his first championship-point, managed to win on the second.

On her third match-point, Shamini converted to her advantage after squandering two at 10-8 and allowing Mouma to deuce at 10-all.

With serve on, Mouma made the cardinal blunder of going for an early shot and only managed to put it out. Shamini waited for Mouma to make another mistake, which the national champion did allowing Shamini to win her first crown of the season.

In the youth boys section, Abhishek Yadav overcame Railways’ Ravindra Kotiyan after the PSPB paddler left Kotiyan go 3-2 up.

But the left-hander played brilliantly to take the next two games and win. Sudhanshu Grover, on the other hand, had an easy outing against his semi-final opponent Pankaj Kumr Vishwakarma, also of Railways, who he beat 4-0.

In the youth girls, Manika Batra made amends for her early loss in the women’s singles to reach the final when she beat Ayhika Mukherjee of AAI 4-1 while Reeth Rishya, who had a similar quarter-final verdict against Amrutha Pushpak of Tamil Nadu, defeated Sreeja Akula of Telangana 4-2.