After their title-winning performance, Rajasthan's doubles pair Abhishek Yadav and Sudhanshu Grover entered the pre-quarterfinals of the 77th Junior and Youth National Table Tennis Championships at the Indoor Stadium here on Friday.
The top seeded pair struggled before defeating Goa's Do Rossario Weseley and Kewal Tamhankar 7-11, 9-11, 11-6, 11-6, 11-2 and the duo is slated to meet Maharashtra B's Mandar Hadikar and Arbaz Shaikh in the next round. The Goan pair had beaten Odisha's Sudeep Behera and Janmajay Moharana 11-6, 11-7, 11-5.
There was no problem even for the other seeded pairs, including No.2 Ravindra Kotiyan and Sanish Ambekar of Maharashtra A, third seeds Vivek Bhargava and Pankaj Vishwakarma, also of Rajasthan, and fourth seeded West Bengal duo Arjun Ghosh and Anirban Ghosh.
Kotiyan and Ambekar defeated Mizoram's Lalrustsanga and Lalruatpuia 3-0 while the Rajasthan pair won against Assam's Aditya Dey and Zeedan Gogoi 11-6, 11-6, 11-8 and the West Bengal duo won over Himachal Pradesh's Ankit Jaglan and Mehul Sharma 3-1.
It was surprising that the Himachal pair managed to take a game off the renowned West Bengal duo. Similarly, all the other seeded combinations had no problem in entering the pre-quarterfinals.
Only the Youth Boys pre-quarters and quarter-finals are slated for Saturday with the final on Sunday while all other doubles events will be held on the last day of the championships.
In Youth Girls doubles, top pair Manika Batra and Aanchal Malhotra of Delhi crossed the second round easily, beating Andhra Pradesh's Kajol Ramjali and Mah Suryadevra 3-1.
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Airport Authority of India's (AAI) second seeded pair of Ayhika Mukherjee and Frenaz Chipa moved into the pre-quarters beating Punjab's Yashi Sharma and Aarushi Arora 3-1. Tamil Nadu's Amrutha Pushpak and Seelanadeepthi Selvakumar, seeded No.3, defeated Haryana's Trisha Paul and Parineeta Saini 3-0 and fourth seeded Archana Kamath and Sreeja Akula (both AAI) accounted for Goa's Tanisi Kirtani and Kefira Rodrigues 3-0.
In Junior Boys and Junior Girls, too, the top pairs had easy outings against their opponents to sail into the pre-quarterfinals.