A slick show from its men gives Petroleum a record-extending 27th title in National table tennis 

Petroleum & RBI win 27th & 1st titles respectively in National Table Tennis Championship.

As widely anticipated, Petroleum went through the motions of winning the team title in the National table tennis championship for a record-extending 27th time and Reserve Bank of India women came up with their first successful title-defence.

Petroleum, without the services of ace Sharath Kamal, chose to rest spearhead Harmeet Desai in the final. Defending singles champion G. Sathiyan, who arrived here on Monday evening, was fielded for the third singles while the struggling duo of A. Amalraj and Manav Thakkar were to play two singles each, if needed.

Like in Jammu, in the previous edition, RBI paraded its strongest trio of defending singles winner Sreeja Akula, Ayhika Mukherjee and an not-so-fully-fit Diya Chitale against Tamil Nadu.

If the TN girls Yashini Sivashankar, Kavyashree Baskar and Selenadeepthi Selvakumar were hoping to avenge the 2-3 defeat suffered at Jammu, RBI served a rude shock.

The identical 3-0 margins for the winners’ came without the members of these champion teams being required to play their best. This highlighted the gulf that exists between some institutional teams and those from States.

A rusty Amalraj, a former National champion, dropped the opening game to much-younger Payas Jain but bounced back to force a match-point in the fourth game. The Delhi youngster won four points on the trot to force the decider, where Amalraj just about managed to come out stronger.

Manav, having lost twice on way to this final, played better against a fighting Sudhanshu Grover to win in four games. Sathiyan took time to get the feel of the conditions against rising-talent Shubh Goel and swiftly closed out the final with a 11-2 scoreline in the third game.