The pre-quarterfinals of the UTT National Ranking Table Tennis Championships saw most top-seeded players advance though not without a few hiccups. In the men’s singles, fourth seed Ronit Bhanja fell early, but the remaining big names, including Ankur Bhattacharjee, Harmeet Desai, G Sathiyan and Payas Jain booked their quarterfinal spots. SFR Snehit had to dig deep to oust Priyanuj Bhattacharyya 3-2, while Harmeet too survived a five-game match against Tharun Shanmugam.
The women’s singles witnessed tighter battles. Top seed Diya Chitale was stretched to five games by Assam’s Trisha Gogoi before scraping through. Seeded players Yashaswini Ghorpade and Sutirtha Mukherjee also endured full-distance wins, while Vadodara champion Anusha Kutumbale crashed out to Reeth Rishya in another thriller.
In the U-19 boys’ singles, only Bengal’s Oishik Ghosh faced a scare, coming from 0-2 down to beat Karnataka’s Atharva Nawaranage 3-2. Top seed PB Abhinand and other favourites — Kushal Chopda, Punit Biswas and M Balamurugan — progressed comfortably.
The U-19 girls’ singles largely stuck to the script, with Divyanshi Bhowmick, Jennifer Varghese, Ananya Muralidharan and M Hansini cruising into the last eight. Maharashtra’s Naisha Rewaskar, however, edged out Sukrati Sharma 3-2 in one of the closer ties.