Senior National Table Tennis Championships 2023: Harmeet Desai, Poymantee Baisya clinch titles

Published at :December 23, 2023 at 9:24 AM

Modified at :January 13, 2024 at 7:01 PM

Asian Games medallist Ayhika lost in the final.

India’s number one men’s singles paddler Harmeet Desai regained his national championships title by defeating Tokyo Olympian Sathiyan Gnanasekaran (4-3) at Senior National Table Tennis Championships 2023. Meanwhile, Poymantee Baisya clinched her maiden national title by beating Asian Games bronze medallist Ayhika Mukherjee (4-2).

The athlete from West Bengal didn’t stop here and further went on to win gold in women’s doubles partnering Sutirtha Mukherjee and bronze in mixed doubles with Akash Pal.

Harmeet Desai won a closely fought final against former national champion Sathiyan Gnanasekaran. Sathiyan was suffering from back injury and retired mid-way a few weeks back in the final of UTT National Ranking tournament. He fought hard till the end but Harmeet had the last laugh.

Sathiyan started off well by winning the opening set but since then it was a see-saw battle with both player exchanging sets. Harmeet rallied back from (1-2) to win the fourth and fifth sets and had the momentum going into the final phase. In the final games, Sathiyan fought back after trailing (4-7) to (8-8) but Harmeet finished the encounter by scoring three successive points.

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The women’s singles final saw two first time finalist battling out for the coveted title. Enroute to the final, ninth seed Poymantee defeated Archana Kamath and defending champion Sreeja Akula. She was in fine form but started the final with a opening set loss. However, Poymantee fought back to win the next three sets and in the end won the match comfortably.

With this the table tennis action for 2023 is done and dusted. However, the Indian paddlers will be back in action soon with the commencement of WTT Star Contender, Qatar and a few weeks later WTT Star Contender Goa.

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