National Games 2022: Gujarat men, West Bengal women clinch table tennis team gold

Gujarat clinched men's table tennis team event gold without dropping a single set in the final against Delhi while West Bengal beat Maharashtra in the women's summit clash at the National Games here on Wednesday.

These were the first gold medals of the National Games which will be officially opened on September 29.

Maharashtra and West Bengal took the men's bronze medals after their semifinal losses while Tamil Nadu and Telangana did the same in women's events.

Gujarat, the top seed in the men’s tournament, was in roaring form since the start of the competition and the only question was if Delhi could at least put up a fight.

The home team was so dominant that it did not drop a single rubber through the competition as Gujarat opened its medal account with a gold.

Going in to the final, the only change they made was that Manav Thakkar took captain Harmeet Desai's place in the first singles match. Thakkar beat Sudhanshu Grover 1-3, 13-11, 14-12 to give Gujarat the lead.

Delhi would have hoped that Payas Jain could repeat his semi-final heroics but Harmeet Desai proved too strong for him. The Delhi lad managed to save four match points and threatened to make a comeback but the Gujarat skipper was in no mood to relent and clinched the first two extended points to give his team a 2-0 lead.

Manush Shah then defeated Yashansh Malik to wrap up the final and help the silver medallists from the last edition to rise higher on the podium on home turf.

Earlier, in the women's final, the experience of Mouma Das and Sutirtha Mukherjee helped West Bengal get the better of Maharashtra 3-1.

Maharashtra made a slight change to their line-up from their previous outings, getting Diya Chitale to play the third singles and pushing Swastika Ghosh to take the top spot. The youngsters, however, could not deal with Ayhika Mukherjee's playing style and lost tamely.

Reeth Rishya Tennison then levelled the scores for the defending champions beating Sutirtha in straight games.

Chitale now needed to beat Mouma to put Maharashtra ahead. The youngster started strong by winning the opening game 11-6 but it was her 38-year-old opponent who frustrated her by making her work hard for every point.

Chitale did well to come back from 4-8 in the fourth game and earn two match points. But, she failed to convert them. Mouma then took advantage of the youngster’s emotional state and drove the advantage home to win the decider.

Swastika put up a far better show in the reverse fixture against Sutirtha, taking the Tokyo Olympian to five games. But the experienced Bengal paddler kept her nerves in the decider to take a sizeable lead and won on her second match point.