Abhishek, Manika in Youth TT nationals pre-quarters

Petroleum Sports Promotion Board (PSPB)'s Abhishek Yadav and Manika Batra moved into the Youth Boys and Girls singles' pre-quarterfinals of the 76th Junior National and Youth Table Tennis Championships at the Radha Convention Centre here Saturday.

Yadav, a semi-finalist in the last edition at Guwahati, defeated Gujarat's qualifier Hash Sachanandani 3-1 (6-11, 11-3, 11-6, 11-8) while second seed Sudhanshu Grover beat Abhilash Bora of Assam 3-1 (12-10, 11-7, 7-11, 11-6) even as the other top eight players joined them in the last-16 stages.

But it was a bit of struggle for Sanish Ambekar, who was a star in Maharashtra's Youth Boys team title as Karantaka's Akshay Mahanta stretched him the full distance. In the end, Ambekar won 10-12, 11-8, 11-8, 9-11, 11-7 to move a state up.

But Ravindra Kotiyan had no such problem, beating Tamil Nadu's Divakar Kishore 13-11, 11-8, 11-4 as did Delhi's Utkarsh Gupta who downed Gujarat's Soham Pandya 11-3, 11-5, 11-6.

In the Youth Girls section, seeded and known players had it easy as PSPB's Manika, Reeth Rishya, Senhora D'Souza and Archana Kamath, AAI's Amrita Pushpak, Gujarat's Fremaz Chipia, West Bengal's Rupsa Bhattacharya and Trisha Das, Maharashtra's Mallika Bhandarkar, Charvi Kawle, Shireen Inamdar, Rutuja Khopkar and Srushti Halengadi, Telangana's Varuni Jaiswal, Tamil Nadu's Abhinaya Ramesh, Kerala's Mariya Rony moved into the pre-quarterfinals.

Except for a few matches, where the winners were stretched at the adjacent hall, the rest eased past their challengers without any trouble. Gujarat's Frenaz had to fight it out against Tamil Nadu's S. Sathiyamoorthy 3-2.

After losing the first game to the Tamil Nadu girl, Frenaz really fought well to win the second at 15-13 and took the lead in the next. However, the Gujarat girl lost the fourth only to regroup herself in the next for a 5-11, 15-13, 11-8, 6-11, 11-5 win.

In the Junior Boys, Delhi's Himanshu Jindal put it across West Bengal's Abhimanyu Mitra after being down by two games. The Delhi boy won 4-11, 8-11, 11-8, 11-8, 11-1. In another match, Suresh Nikhil of Tamil Nadu won 9-11, 11-6, 5-11, 11-9, 11-6 against Shivam Shrivastava.