The experience of Sabine Winter turned the tide in favour of debutant Puneri Paltan after its match against defending champion Dabang Delhi went down to the wire.
Importantly, Paltan’s 8-7 triumph left Delhi ruing missed opportunities in the inaugural clash of the Ultimate Table Tennis league at New Delhi on Thursday.
For the home team, G. Sathiyan’s twin-wins proved inadequate. He grabbed a consolation 2-1 victory over Harmeet Desai in a repeat clash of the recent Commonwealth championship final to keep his team in the hunt after Paltan’s Ayhika Mukherjee played to her reputation of being the Commonwealth title-holder by blanking a nervous Krittwika Singh Roy.
READ: UTT: Evenly matched teams promise close title-race
Sathiyan returned to join hands with Bernadette Szocs to collect three more points at the expense of Chaung Chih-Yuan and Ayika in the third rubber.
At this stage, the score stood at 5-4 in Delhi’s favour. As it turned out, in the two singles featuring overseas recruits for the teams, Paltan proved stronger.
Chaung Chih-Yuan made amends for the loss in the mixed doubles by stopping Jon Persson 2-1.
With the match tied at 6-6, Sabine raced away with the opening game against Szocs. Much to the credit of Szocs, she handled the mounting pressure well in the second game and restored parity. In the decider, Sabine broke away from 6-6 and held on to her slender lead.
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