Young Ayushi Shirgaonkar displayed her skills in the Open category event of ‘Spin 2 Win’ promotional table tennis tournament played at PTKS, Vile Prle yesterday late evening. This tournament which was dominated by boys and men, witnessed very few young girls, namely- Vasundhara Mistry, Nisha Kapse, Ayushi Shirgaonkar and Ishana Babu taking up the challenge in their respective qualifying league groups. Among them Ayushi and Ishana clashed with eachother in their Group F and played a very close match, which was won 3-2 by Ayushi, who qualified in 2nd position from her group for the main draw. The top position in their group was secured by Harshal Badlani.
Group ‘G’ also witnessed a tough competition among Ulhas Shirke, Anil Solanki, Aiden Fereira and Agastya Shetty. It was an equally balanced group and it was very difficult to predict the 1st and 2nd positions, as the matches progressed. After the final stage, it ended in a triple tie among Ulhas, Anil and Agastya. Eldest among them, Ulhas Shirke ( 70+) ,having lost to Anil Solanki 2-3 in a closely fought battle, made a quick comeback in the very next thrilling match, defeating 15 year old promising junior Agastya Shetty 3-2. With Aiden Fereira having lost all his three matches, had no chance to qualify, Anil Solanki lost his crucial match to Agastya Shetty 0-3, allowing Agastya and Ulhas to secure 1st and 2nd positions respectively.
Favourites Arnav Kshirsagar, Maruti Kasture and Sharang Bhagdikar qualified for the main draw securing 1st position from their respective groups. The names of the other qualifiers for the main draw in Open category are : First position: Anupam Rajak, Sagar Dhanu, Shashank Bisht, and 2nd position : Yuvraj Khandwala, Shourya Karkera, Sameer Sharma, Ayush Gudekar, Prafulla Bodhere, and Abhishek Aniyeri. Matches of Under -15 category will be played tomorrow at 5 pm.