Manav Thakkar powered Petroleum Sports Promotion Board (PSPB) to a 3-1 win over West Bengal to win the Youth Boys trophy, while the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) etched their name for the first time on the Youth Girls silverware as they beat Tamil Nadu in the Junior and Youth National Table Tennis Championships at Durgapur on Saturday.
Earlier, PSPB Academy blanked out Gujarat 3-0 in Junior Boys final and West Bengal thrashed Tamil Nadu a 3-1 in Junior Girls’ title-clash.
If PSPB managed to lay their hands on both trophies, it was a big loss for Tamil Nadu girls who lost their No. 1 position after they failed to retain the Junior Girls crown and end up with silver in both team finals.
The mere presence of Manav, who is No 2 in the world, was good enough to assure PSPB or, for that matter, its Academy the collection of silverwares. And he did not belie the expectation, despite being taken the full distance by Ronit Bhanja of West Bengal in Youth final. Siddesh Pande’s loss in the second rubber did not make any difference as Jeet Chandra in his singles against Abhimanyu Mitra and Manav again, in the reverse singles against Anirban Ghosh, did a clinical job to finish in style.
RBI, with newly-recruited seasoned campaigners like Ayhika Mukherjee, Sreeja Akula and Priyadarsini Das, made it a child’s play against Tamil Nadu which lacked in substance in Youth Girls. One expected Tamil Nadu to give some fight, but the results proved it otherwise.
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