India’s Harmeet Desai added another foreign player to his list of scalps as he beat Austrian Stefan Fegerl in the first match to give Maharashtra United a winning start against RP-SG Mavericks on day six of Ultimate Table Tennis in Chennai on Wednesday.

Building on Desai’s win, United won the next four matches to take a big 12-3 lead at the end of five rubbers at the Nehru indoor stadium. Continuing his good form, Desai got the better of Fegerl 2-1 (11-6, 9-11, 11-6) in the opening match. Starting in top gear, Desai clinched the opening game 11 -3 before Fegerl pulled back game 2 at 9-11. Harmeet was in no mood to let it go and sealed Game 3 and match at 11-6 for his side.

Desai’s teammate Portugal’s Fu Yu then showed her experience and class against young Indian paddler Archana Kamath. In no time, she won the first two games easily, conceding just three and six points respectively. Kamath fought tooth and nail in the third game and won it as Yu made errors at crucial junctures.

Fegerl suffered another reverse as the experienced Portugal player Joao Monteiro, handed him a 3-0 defeat. The United player played aggressively and pinned down the Austrian with a series of powerful shots to win 11-3, 11-4, 11-9. In the fifth rubber, Liu Jia walloped Sabine Winter by three games [11-9, 11-8, 11-10] to put United firmly in sight of another win.