Petroluem Sports Prmotion Board’s Kajal Kumari and Mohd. Ghufran registered contrasting wins to bag the women’s singles and men’s singles crowns respectively in the LIC of India sponsored 24th Federation Cup All India Carrom Championship in Dadar on Friday.
In the women’s final, Kajal was in complete control and went on to score an authoritative 25-13, 25-12 victory over Aisha Mohd of Jain Irrigation. On the other hand, Ghufran started with a flourish, but later faced quite a strong challenge from world champion Prashant More of Reserve Bank of India before scraping through 25-13, 12-25, 22-19 in a tense men’s final.
Ghufran starting with white coins quickly settled into a rhythm. Calm and steady, he exhibited good control with his shots to garb the upper hand by pocketing first game against the reigning world champion.
The Mumbai-based More, backed by a large gathering of local supporters, bounced back into contention with some clever play and forced a decider.
In the third game, More raced to a 19-11 lead at the end of the sixth board. But the local player made a couple of mistakes and missed opportunities in the next which his rival cashed in to narrow the gap to 18-19 going into the final board. In the last board, both players were nervous and started to miss simple shot before Ghufran managed to steadily pocket the queen and his coins to win four points which helped him win the contest 22-19 and emerge champion.
In the men’s doubles competition, K Srinivas and Sandeep Deorukhkar rallied from the loss of the first game to overcome Yogesh Pardeshi and K. Ramesh Babu 22-25, 25-16, 25-15 to emerge champions.
The women’s doubles final also witnessed a similar trend as Nagajyoti and I. Ilavazhki came back from a game down to beat Rashmi Kumari and Kajal Kumari (PSPB) 4-25, 25-11, 25-7.
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