Pune’s Rohit Chaudhari was in great form during Jolly Gymkhana State Veterans’ Ranking Tournament , which concluded at their Ghatkoper premises yesterday evening. Having remained unbeaten in the Team Championship event, while playing for King Pong team and lifting the Winner’s trophy for his team, Rohit continued with his consistency in the Men’s 40+ individual singles too. The former Shiv Chhatrapati Award winner, who has represented Maharashtra State for 22 consecutive years in a row across all categories, almost conquered this tournament .
Rohit Chaudhari( left) with P.G.kelkar( Centre) and Vivek Alavani( Right)
It looked like that Rohit’s opponent in the finals Mumbai’s Samir Bhate who had in the earlier rounds knocked out seasoned players like Sachin Darvatkar, Vivek Bhargava and Abhay Mehta successively, would pose a big challenge for him. But, Rohit skilfully forced his aggressive opponent into errors to win the match and title. Besides winning Gold medal and cash prize for his individual performance, Rohit also received a special trophy , which was donated by generous and popular senior TT player Yogesh Desai.
All the medal winners pose with JollyGymkhana Officials.
One of the closely contested finals was noticed in Women’s 40+ section between Sushma Mogre ( Thane) and Sarika Varade( Pune) which the former won, after battling with the long rallies full of sparks . Sarika had earlier in the semi finals surprised second seeded Shruti kanade Joshi before moving into finals.
In the Men’s 50+ section Vivek Alavani played a well controlled game to meet the challenge from equally consistent Navin Salian, who was not in his usual form during the finals. And, this came to the advantage of Vivek, who won this final match . However, the Women’s 50+ Singles witnessed a good action between Mumbai’s Neeta Kulkarni and second seed Trupti Machve from Thane, which Neeta won 3-1 with her much improvised backhand opening using her anti spin rubber and attacking well with her inverted faster forehand side rubber.
Trupti Machve greets winner Neeta Kulkarni after the W-50+ finals.
Though Percy Mehta the recent Mumbai Games Veterans’ TT champion looked confident in this tournament after knocking down 2nd and 3rd seeded Dinkar Selarka and Avinash Joshi respectively in earlier rounds of men’s 60+ singles, could not repeat his anti spin magic against top ranked Prakash kelkar in the finals. More consistent Prakash won this final against Percy to bag the Gold. The Women’s 60+ singles saw Pune’s Ranjana Patki recording a confident looking win over top seeded Rajeshwari Mehtre to win the title.
Sarika ( 2nd from Left) with Winner of W-40+ Sushma ( 2nd from Roght) and Shravani( Ext Left) and Shruti( Ext Right)
The Men’s 65+ Singles was a battle between the brothers- Suhas and Satish Kulkarni , which younger brother Suhas, the former international, won with a secure margin. However in the Women’s 65+ Singles, debutant Maria D’sa a regular badminton player and wife of former Badminton International Leroy D’sa, gave a tough time to top seed Preeti Pardeshi, which Preeti won in five games. Maria led 2-1 at one stage, but failed to take the fourth game, which allowed the top seed to use all her experience to snatch the decider and the match.
Pinakin Sampat who also represented PJ Hindu Gymkhana in team event, proved his supremacy in the Men’s 69+ Singles and winning the Finals by defeating A.S. Shaikh from Sangli. Pinakin is the cousin of TT legend late Dilip Sampat. Another veteran who dominated in the Grandpa’s section of Men’s 75+ was Zarir Khandadia stopped the winning run of R.B Kale, who had earlier in Quarter finals surprised top seed Ram Mohan Rao. The efforts of Mr. R.B. Kale are to be appreciated, as he played in this tournament, besides umpiring the matches continuously for two days. Later, the ever smiling and cheerful Zarir went on to defeat Parvez Davar in the finals to win the Gold medal.
Overall, it was a well organised tournament with good team work displayed by the officials of Jolly Gymkhana and the Referee/Umpires team for conducting all the matches as per schedule.