Maharashtra’s table tennis players scored breakthrough victories in the 11Sports East Zone National Ranking Tournament on Sunday in Guwahati.
Siddesh Pande and Raegan Albuquerque, respectively, won the men’s singles and junior boys’ singles titles.
Madurika Patkar clinched the silver medal in the women’s singles.
The unseeded Siddesh Pande defeated Amalraj Anthony and former junior world No 1 Manav Thakkar en route to the title.
Siddesh began with a 4-0 triumph over Sivananda Seshadri of CRSB and a 4-2 win over Ronit Bhanja of Airports Authority of India (AAI). He, then, defeated PSPB’s Amalraj Anthony 4-2.
In the semi-finals, he defeated Arjun Ghosh while Manav Thakkar was beaten 3-4 in the finals.
Madurika Patkar had a tough start, scraping past West Bengal’s Premangi Ghosh 4-2. She trounced Oishwaryaa Deb 4-0 in her next match. She then got past RBI’s Amrutha Pushpak, West Bengal’s Surbhi Patwari and PSPB’s Reeth Rishya to enter the title round.
But Suthirta Mukherjee of West Bengal proved to be a handful in the finals and Madurika lost 0-4.
In junior boys, Raegan Albuquerque eased into the final but had to dig deep to oust Manush Shah of Gujarat 4-2 to bag the gold medal.
