King Pong Team represented by variety of players like Pune’s Rohit Choudhari, Mumbai’s Vivek Bhargava, Vivek Alwani from Jalgaon and Ram kadam from Air India combined well to lift the team championship trophy of the Jolly Gymkhana State Ranking Veterans Table tennis Tournament at their premises today. Having reached the finals, after defeating Guru Table Tennis Centre represented by Kiran Salian,Navin salian & Rajesh Singh in semi finals yesterday evening, the challengers took on another well balanced side of Solapur team led by Dr. Nitin Toshniwal along with Yogesh Desai and Dinkar Selarka.
King Pong and Solapur players together pose for a group photo after their finals. L to R : Vivek A, Ram, Rohit,Dinkar, Yogesh, Dr.Nitin & Vivek B.
As expected, the audience gathered in large number to watch this match, witnessed lots of good rallies in all those five closely fought matches. Rohit Choudhari who won both his singles being the best player of King Pong, received good support from Vivek Alwani, who won the crucial decider against Dinkar Selarka to give his team the biggest gift in the form of trophy. However, the third match which gave Solapur 2-1 lead over King Pong was the match of the day, with a lot of excitement noticed. The combination of Yogesh Desai and Dinkar Selarka proved very useful in the third game and decider , when they rallied to take comfortable lead in those games, which they won with ease. Both Yogesh and Dinkar also showed a fine gesture towards the end of the deciding doubles game, by allowing their opponents to receive their service again, as they had a mix up between them and the Umpire declaring the point and match in favour of Solapur pair, which finally won that doubles match at 11-9.
An Exciting doubles match in progress, with Dinkar & Yogesh facing camera and Vivek A and Vivek B with their backs towards camera.
Earlier in the other semi finals played yesterday ,the Solapur team had defeated P.J. Hindu Gymkhana team represented by former international Suhas Kulkarni, his brother Jayant Kulkarni and Pinakin Sampat , before entering the finals. This time, the players seemed happy, for the manner in which the team matches were played as per schedule. Thanks to good work by Jt. Chief referees, the team of efficient umpires and the organizers for making available 8 tables for the matches.