Sathiyan Gnanasekaran raised both his arms and crashed onto the floor as the LED panels at the Jawaharlal Nehru Indoor Stadium in Chennai swiveled to turn their foci and bathe him in white light. This had been a lengthy and arduous duel that would have forced his heart, nerve and sinew.
Ahead of Wednesday’s Ultimate Table Tennis tie against defending champion Athlead Goa Challengers, Sathiyan Gnanasekaran spoke at length about how it was necessary to ‘convert those crucial moments’ for Dabang Delhi TTC— the side he has turned up for in all five seasons— to open its account.
And he decided to lead by example and remove the ambiguity about the phrase, if any, as Dabang won its first match in the ongoing season 9-6.
It only raised the stakes that the first match pitted Sathiyan opposite Italy’s Mihai Bobocica. When the duo had faced each other the only time in 2021, Bobocica didn’t even drop a single game. In the ongoing iteration of the league as well, Bobocica has been unforgiving.
In fact, ahead of the fixture, Bobocica stood tall as the most successful player of the season, if forehand wins were being taken into consideration with a staggering 65 per cent success rate. The booming smash that had Manush Shah crawling on all fours in the match against Ahmedabad SG Pipers comes to mind.
READ MORE | UTT 2024: Reeth turns back the clock, Ahmedabad SG Pipers move table top
The first game, which saw the longest rally of the season worth 23 shots, saw Sathiyan concede 8-11 while playing from the right. Bobocica, who uses high-tension rubber on both the forehand and backhand, tried to use the entire width of the table to try and outwit the local lad with a judicious mix of speed and topspin.
Sathiyan initially trailed in the second game as well, but once he started exploring the depth of the table more with his backhand, Bobocica started to stutter while being cramped for space.
Sathiyan’s anticipated ‘crucial moment’ came in the final game when he was quick to find Bobocica in his corner and decided to risk a flick down the line. While that gave him a solitary point, it saw an alert Bobocica trying to avoid coming round the corner to the 31-year-old. With that playing on his mind, the Italian eventually lost the deciding game 11-9.
Meanwhile, Thailand’s Orawan Paranang did what Reeth Rishya (Ahmedabad SG Pipers) and Suthasini Sawettabut (Jaipur Patriots) couldn’t – take a game off the Challengers’ Yangzi Liu.
In fact, she went a step further to win the tie 2-1 (11-7, 11-10, 6-11) and hand the Australian her first defeat of the ongoing iteration.
Sathiyan returned after a brief interval to make it two out of two as the Indian paddler combined with Orawan to beat Challengers skipper Harmeet Desai and Liu 2-1 in the mixed doubles.
Later, Harmeet and Andreas Levenko grabbed a piece of the pie each before the match trickled into the decider with Dabang on the brink of victory this season at 7-4. However, Harmeet maintained his composure to pull out the now-viral shooter Yusuf Dikec’s pistol celebration from the Olympics as he beat the Austrian with half-long flicks.
The long-pipped side of the racket, usually reserved for defensive exchanges, can often be used to go on the offensive. Manika Batra has been known for doing it. On matchday seven, Yashaswini Ghorpade employed it effectively but her efforts went in vain as an in-form Diya Chitale claimed the match point via a golden point in the very first game.
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