Pune, Jul 13 (PTI) Defending champions Chennai Lions made a commanding start to the fourth season of the Ultimate Table Tennis, winning their season-opener against Puneri Paltan 10-5 here at the Shiv Chhatrapati Sports Complex on Thursday.
Chennai Lions sealed their win in the fourth match of the night, when Benedikt Duda won the first game against Manush Shah, with the defending champions taking a decisive 8-2 lead.
According to the UTT rules, a team that wins eight or more games out of the 15 will be termed as the winner of the match, for the league as well as the knockout stage.
In fact, Chennai Lions won four out of five matches of the opening night to make a strong start to their title defence, which they won four years ago in the previous edition of UTT in 2019.
In the first match of men’s singles, ace Indian player and world No 61 Sharath Kamal made a confident start to the tournament winning the first game, but his Egyptian opponent, ranked world No 23, Omar Assar came back strongly in the second to level the terms.
However, there was no stopping Sharath in the third game as he stormed to a 11-10, 9-11, 11-6 win over Assar, making it a 2-1 win for Chennai.
In the second contest between world No 32 Australia’s Yangzi Liu and India’s Archana Kamath at No 159, the former faced no troubles in winning the first two games.
Liu was 5-0 ahead in the first game and clinched a 11-5 win at the end of it, but had to work harder in the second game which went down to the wire.
Archana fought back well to win the third game but could not stop Liu from giving Chennai Lions a lead with a 11-5, 11-10, 10-11 win. The second contest thus went in favour of Chennai 2-1.
The third contest was a mixed doubles match between Chennai’s Sharath and Liu against Omar and Archana from Puneri Paltan. Sharath-Liu found no troubles in taking the first game 11-5, and in the second, despite being 6-6 at one stage, the Chennai pair edged ahead 10-6 and eventually won 11-8.
A dominant third game gave the Sharath-Liu pair a commanding win by 11-5, 11-8, 11-2 and by the end of the third match, Chennai Lions were 7-2 against Puneri Paltan.
In the fourth match, Chennai’s Duda, ranked No 34, was pushed for a 11-9 win in the first game by 134th-ranked Shah. Duda took the second game 11-7 and in the third, Shah dominated to win 11-7.
In the end, Duda won his match against Shah 11-9, 11-7, 7-11 and Chennai Lions’ score read 9-3.
In the fifth and last match — women’s singles — the world No 58 Czech Republic’s Hana Matelova began with a 11-6 win over the 102nd ranked Indian Sutirtha Mukherjee. The Indian fought back well in the second game for a 11-5 win, but Matelova stamped her authority with a 11-2 win in the final game to win a match for Puneri Paltan.
Source: PTI News
