Bengal players bag seven medals in Inter-School National TT meet

Bengals young table tennis players cornered as many as one gold, two silver and four bronze medals in the 4th Inter-School National Table Tennis Championship, here at the Abhay Prashal Sports Club on Sunday.

The medals were split between North Bengal (three bronze and one silver) and West Bengal (one gold, one silver and one bronze).

Maharashtra (two gold, one bronze) and Telangana (two bronze, one silver) too made a killing, cornering most of the medals on offer.

Aniket Sen Choudhary led the charge for West Bengal in the Junior Boys' Singles, beating India's No. 15 Soumyadeep Sarkar (representing North Bengal) 3-2 in a high-octane final clash.

His statemate Ankur Bhattacharjee too reached the finals in the Sub-Junior Boys' Singles but he couldn't unravel Uttar Pradesh's Sarth Mishra, losing 2-3 in an intense battle.

In the Sub-Junior Girls' category, North Bengal's Sania Bhowmick and West Bengal's Srijita Shaw made it to the semi-finals but they couldn't overcome their respective opponents to settle for a bronze each.

Two other North Bengal stalwarts, Sataporni De ranked 13th in the country, and Mainak Das, bowed out of the Junior Girls' and Boys' individual competitions in the semis to settle for a bronze medal each.

For Maharashtra, Ananya Chande and Tejal Kamble's sizzling performances in the Sub-Junior Girls' category helped them clinch gold while promising Gaurav Panchangam was ousted in the semis by the eventual gold medallist Sarth Mishra.

India No. 43 Ananya Chande grabbed the spotlight as she upset Odisha's Sweta Padma Dalai in an enthralling 3-1 encounter. Tejal Kamble also towered over Ananya Thakur from Chandigarh with an identical 3-1 score line.

Similarly, for Telangana, Bhavita N continued her red-hot form to storm into the finals. She, however, capitulated 1-3 to Yashashwani Ghorpade of Karnataka to bag the silver. A. Jatin Dev and Vidhi Jain bagged the bronze medals in the Sub-Junior Boys and Junior Girls' category respectively.

--IANS

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