CHENNAI: DHFL Maharashtra United couldn’t have asked for an easier Tie as it overwhelmed RP-SG Mavericks 16-12 in the Ceat-Ultimate Table Tennis League here on Tuesday.
At the end of two round of Ties for all the teams, United is placed at the top with 31 points while Mavericks is at the bottom with 23 points.
For Mavericks, having A. Sharath Kamal and world No. 23 Stefan Fegerl of Austria was an opportunity to bag maximum points in singles. Against United, while Sharath sparkled in his 11-5, 11-6, 8-11 win over world No. 8 Wong Chun Ting, Fegerl lost both his singles matches, taking just a single game in the process. And it proved to be costly.
This was certainly not the Austrian’s day. Armed with an impressive CV of beating 2012 Olympic champion Zhang Jike in the 2015 Polish Open and losing two matches was a disaster from which Mavericks couldn’t recover.
Harmeet hasn’t put a foot wrong in the league. The 24-year-old, ranked 79 in the world, continued from where he left off the other day, with a highly impressive 11-6, 9-11, 11-6 win over the Austrian. Harmeet served well throughout and returned better, and his backhand flips were effective. Barring the second game, where he committed a lot of unforced errors on the backhand side, especially while trailing 8-10, Harmeet was at his attacking best.
The crowd that came to cheer for Sharath went home satisfied. Ranked 43 in the world, the former CWG champion was at his best while unleashing his trademark forehand top-spins to which the Hong Konger mostly had no answers. This was Sharath’s first win in their four meetings.
“Earlier [March 2015] too I had defeated world No. 8 Chuang Chih-Yuan of Taipei in the Asia Cup in Jaipur,” Sharath said. “N0. 8 happens to be my lucky number.”
Today’s match: Oilmax-Stag Yoddhas vs Falcons TTC.
The results: RP-SG Mavericks lost to DHFL Maharashtra United 11-16 (Stefan Fegerl lost to Harmeet Desai 6-11, 11-9, 6-11; Archana Kamath lost to Fu Yu 3-11, 6-11, 11-9; A. Sharath Kamal & Sofia Polcanova lost to Harmeet & Liu Jia 11-10, 7-11, 10-11; Stefan Fegerl lost to Joao Monteiro 3-11, 4-11, 9-11; Sabine Winter lost to Liu Jia 9-11, 8-11, 10-11; Sharath bt Wong Chun Ting 11-5, 11-6, 8-11; Winter bt Krittwika Roy 11-8, 11-7, 11-4; Tiago Apolonia lost to Wong 8-11, 11-6, 9-11; Sofia bt Fu Yu 11-9, 7-11, 11-6).