UTT South Zone C'ships: Manav Thakkar ousted as five women seeds also tumble

Goa's Wesley Do Rasario beat top seed Manav Thakkar 3-11, 11-9, 7-11, 10-12, 11-9, 11-9, 11-8 in a marathon match to reach the round of 32 of South Zone National ranking championships.

Manav Thakkar had an unconvincing start to the match and lost steam midway.

It was a day of some great upsets as unheralded Wesley Do Rosario (Haryana), putting up a solid display, toppled top-seeded Manav Thakkar (PSPB) in the men’s singles of the UTT-South Zone National ranking table tennis championships at the Jimmy George Indoor stadium here on Friday.

It was a marathon match as the Goa-born Rosario, after losing the first game, came back strongly and held on bravely against Manav before extending the match to its full distance to come out trumps in the closing stages to record a 3-11, 11-9, 7-11, 10-12, 11-9, 11-9, 11-8 win.

The round of 64 match between the duo had started well for Thakkar but he seemed unsettled as his left-handed rival started the second game aggresively. Manav, however, recovered well to take the lead but Rosario bounced back in style as he reeled off the last three games to emerge the winner.

In the round of 32 match later in the day, Rosario once again sparkled as he mowed down Maharashtra's Mandar Hardikar 7-11, 11-7, 11-7, 12-14, 11-8, 11-9.

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Soumyajit Ghosh, on a comeback trail, beat seventh-seed Arjun Ghosh while booking a place in the pre-quarterfinals. Second seed Sudhanshu Grover, Siddesh Pande, Sanish Shetty, Jeet Chandra, Harmeet Desai and Sushmit Sriram completed the round of 16 lineup.

In the women’s section, five seeded players were ousted -- third seed Sagarika Mukherjee (Railways) was hounded out by the former National champion, Shamini Kumaresan 11-5. 11-7, 7-11, 11-8, 11-13, 9-11, 11-5, while fourth seed Divya Deshpande was taken to task by Takame Sarkar who won 11-4, 9-11, 11-8, 9-11, 11-9, 11-9.

Fifth seed Sreeja Akulla, No. 6 Pooja Sahasrabudhe and the eighth seed Reeth Rishya also suffered similar fate after they lost to Poymantee Baisya, Shruti Amurte and Senhora D’Souza respectively.

The exit of these players now leaves behind only the top seed Sutirtha Mukherjee, second seed Madhurika Patkar and seventh seed Ayhika Mukerjee in the round of 16, which will be played on Saturday.