UTT 2025 | U Mumba pulls off a Houdini, sneaks into the summit clash

U Mumba TT stages historic comeback to reach semifinals in Ultimate Table Tennis with Abhinandh and Ghorpade shining.

Never had a team made a comeback after trailing 4-7 in an Ultimate Table Tennis knockout match.

And never had U Mumba TT been able to breach the semifinal barrier in the first five editions. Both the firsts were achieved on Saturday, courtesy P.B. Abhinandh and Yashaswini Ghorpade – two of the most emerging paddlers on the Indian table tennis horizon.

With his back against the wall and trailing 0-2 against Vitor Ishiy, Abhinandh finally found an answer to Ishiy’s serve and stretched the match into the deciding tie.

Yashaswini – the Bengaluru girl – then held her nerves and blanked Krittwika Sinha Roy 3-0 on the last point of the match.

After closing out the first two games, Yashaswini raced to a 10-6 lead, Krittwika finally getting trapped into Yashaswini’s long-pimpled backhand.

But Krittwika then had a four-point spree. But the golden point saw Krittwika finally hit her backhand long to let the U Mumba camp burst into a wild bout of celebration.

Earlier, captain Harmeet Desai couldn’t have gotten the Challengers off to a better start than a clean slate against Lilian Bardet. Despite Bardet having been his bogey player in UTT in the past, Harmeet went all out with his forehand winners to not let Bardet get into his game.