Kiran Salian,Sunil Babras, Avinash Joshi and Deepak Dudhane won their respective age group Table tennis finals at the 2nd Maharashtra State veterans’ TT Tourney, which concluded at New Era School, Pachgani yesterday evening. Though some seasoned players like Prakash kelkar , Debjeet Chatterjee and others could not play in this competition, there were many other players from Mumbai, Pune and Solapur seen at this tourney.
Kiran Salian while receiving his prize
There were few surprises noticed in this tournament, but favourites like Sunil Babras and Kiran Salian continued to show their supremacy in their respective 50+ and 40+ finals. Dinkar Shelarka, who could not make it to the finals of 50+ men’s singles in the Chiplun tourney, made it this time, but he lost to seasoned Sunil Babras in the finals.Deepak Dudhane beat former international Suhas Kulkarni in the finals of 65+ men’s singles.
Deepak Dudhane
There were few new entrants in the 40 + men’s singles this year and among them, Samir Deo invited all the attention. Samir used his variations well in the second round of 40+ Singles, when he shocked third seeded Navin Salian, brother of Kiran Salian . It was a well contested match in the tournament. Samir was down 0-2 after the first two games, but recovered to equa;lise the set scores at 2-2. A great fighter that he is, Samir in spite of being down 6-10 in the decider, went on to win the game and match at 14-12. He was however unlucky to lose to Makarand Kulkarni 1-3 in the pre quarter finals.
Samir Deo
In the Veterans’ women’s section, Mangal Saraf, Suhasini Bakre and Shravani Dhapre were the winners of 60+, 50+ and 40+ titles respectively.
Results of all the Men’s singles finals are as follows:
Men’s 40+ Winner : Kiran Salian R-up : Dipesh Abhyankar
Men’s 50+ Winner: Sunil Babras R-up : Dinkar Shelarka
Men’s 60+ Winner : Avinash Joshi R-up : Mr. Gujarati
Men’s 65+ Winner : Deepak Dudhane R-up : Suhas Kulkarni
Women’s 40+ Winner Shravani Dhapre, R-up : Trupti Machve
Women’s 50+ Winner :Suhasini Bakre, R-up: Neeta Kulkarni
Women’s 60+ Winner : Mangal Saraf, R-up : Rajeshwari M.