The scene was of finals of 21st Commonwealth Table tennis championship at Cuttack, Orissa. But, it gave an impression that India’s National Championship event was being held. In both Men and Women’s finals, it was all India affair, with Ayhika Mukherjee facing her team mate and senior Madhurika Patkar and Harmeet Desai facing G. Sathiyan his team mate. Incidentally, all of them were part of the Indian teams which won Gold in the Women’s and Men’s team events held earlier.
Harmeet Desai
The best of 7 games battle between Ayhika Mukherjee and Madhurika Patkar turned out to be a one sided battle, with Madhurika having lost the first three games, just managed to inch closer to her younger opponent in the fourth game, which she also lost on match points, allowing Ayhika to win her first Commonwealth TT Women’s title. However, in the men’s singles finals, it was the other way, with Harmeet much below the world ranking compared to his dashing opponent, put up a grand show, with his fiery counter attack, to win the set 4-3 in the best match of this tournament.
Ayhika Mukherjee
Down 0-2 , cool and calm Harmeet quickly recovered to equalize the set score at 2-2 and then fought very hard to win that most important fifth game over extra points 17-15. However, the great fighter in Sathian saw him equalize the set score in the sixth game. But, thereafter what we saw in the decider was the great battle between the two youngsters, which was won by more patient looking Harmeet.
The other individual events were also dominated by Indian players, with all India battles noticed in Men’s and Women’s doubles events, with Pooja Sahasrabuddhe and Krittiwika Sinha Roy winning the title beating other Indian pair of Sreeja Akula and Mousumi Paul 3-1 , while Anthony Amalraj & Manav Thakkar shocked Sharat Kamal & G. Sathiyan 3-1 . The only individual event where foreign players entered the finals was Mixed doubles event. But, here too young pair of G. Sathian & Archana kamat won Gold medal for India beating Pend Yu En Koen & Goi Rui Xuan from Singapore 3-0.