India's Suthirtha Mukherjee and Padasak Tanviriyavechakul of Thailand emerged champions in the junior girls and junior boys sections of the Indian Junior and Cadet Open Table Tennis Championships at the Mukherjee Stadium here today.
Suthirtha made amends for her Road to Nanjin series loss, where she was the top-seed. The seasoned Kolkata girl did not have to sweat it out against teammate Ayhika Mukherjee, also from Kolkata, as the former won 4-0, allowing her rival a maximum of seven points in all the four sets.
The top-seeded Thai defeated No. 2 seed Kirill Gerassimenko of Kazakhstan 4-2 in a thrilling final that had all the ingredients-great rallies, good counter and pace throughout the match.
What separated the two game-wise was the ability of the Thai to come back despite being two games down. The crucial third game, which got extended, went the Thai way. From there, he never looked behind as he shut out the Kazakh challenge to win 7-11 7-11 12-10 11-7 11-5 11-2.
"I was not playing as well as I should have been in the first two games and made far too many unforced errors. But I won the crucial third game with some difficult and after that I cashed in on my rival's mistakes," said Padasak.
Earlier, Utkarsh Gupta stretched the No. 2 seed in the semifinals with some astonishing rallies and brilliant forehand winners.
Down 0-2, Gupta did well to come back and take two sets off his opponents to level the score. But apparently, losing steam and unable to cover the acute angle shots from the Kazakh, Gupta wilted under pressure to bow out.
Singapore's Shao Feng Ethan downed India's Manav Thakkar 3-0 (11-2 11-6 11-3) for the cadet boys crown while the cadet girls singles title went to another Singaporean, Hui li Tay who beat India's Archana Kamath 11-6 11-7 9-11 11-6.
As a consolation for the Indians, Aishwarya Pathak and Abhinaya Ramesh defeated the other Indian pair Shruti Amrute and Archana Kamath 3-0 (11-6, 11-8, 12-10) win the cadet girls doubles titles. Otherwise, it was a foreign show all the way.
