Shillong, April 22: With the conclusion of the team events on Thursday, day five of the 83rd Senior National Table Tennis Championship was devoted to doubles, and individual women’s and men’s singles events.
Meghalaya’s paddlers were involved in all three categories but experienced some agonising defeats at the SAI Indoor Stadium here on Friday.
Tanushree Das Gupta was leading by two games to love (for zero score) against Suhana N. of Uttar Pradesh in their evening match-up but saw the lead overturned to lose 3-2, with the last game going 11-7 in favour of the UP paddler.
The men’s doubles pairing of Yogesh Singh and Surangjit Dey also went down to Manipur 3-2 after leading 2-1 at one stage.
Dey, however, won one of his singles matches, while Anwesha Choudhury and Anubhav Dutta won a mixed doubles match against Goa on Thursday.
Meanwhile, former national champions Archana Kamath, Sutirtha Mukherjee and Madhurika Patkar, taking the qualification route, entered the women’s singles main draw at the championships.
With the direct entry stipulations restricting only the top eight ranked players in the second stage of the singles events, all these players went through the first-stage process. However, Sutirtha had to play out of her skin against Koushiki Dasgupta of Bengal to grab the lone spot.
They will be joining the top-ranked players lying in wait when the main draw events begin on Saturday afternoon.
