Gandhidham: Gujarat’s two young paddlers-Dhruv Bhambhani and Daniya Godil-did the state proud by finishing on the podium of the National Ranking Table Tennis Championships 2024 that was organised in Goa from October 18 to 25.
In the under-11 boys’ event, the 10-year-old Dhruv from Kutch, who was seeded 14th in the meet, fought well in his pre-quarter final showdown against the third seed Arunim Agarwal of Delhi to pip him 3-2 to enter the quarterfinal. Here, he got past his city mate and eight-year-old Rehansh Singhvi 3-0 to secure his semi-final berth at the meet.
Dhruv lost the steam in the semis and fell to the second seed Mahalanabish of Bengal 0-3 to settle for bronze, his first at national meet.
In the girls under-13 event, Surat’s prolific paddler and 12th seed Daniya who took out Tamil Nadu’s A Bavithra in the second round, Telengana’s Sri Saanvi in the pre-quarterfinals.
The 12-year-old was pitted against the fourth seed Aradhya Dhingra of PSPB A and the Surat paddler dug in deep to get past the higher seeded player 3-2. She, however, lost to the top seed T Kalbhairav of Karnataka in the semi-final to lay her hands on the bronze medal.
Earlier in the prestigious tournament, Kutch’s young paddler Rehansh, who is all but eight, came up with a stupendous show in the qualifiers where he upset tournament’s 10th seed Sohan Adhikari of Bengal 3-2.
Rehansh oozed confidence thereafter and went on to clean up Ahmed Jihan of Assam 3-0 in the first round and then fought hard to stop Ay Maheshwari of Haryana 3-2 in the pre-quarters before eventually falling to his state mate Dhruv in the quarters.
Gujarat State Table Tennis Association president Pramod Chaudhary lauded the feat of the state’s young brigade. “GSTTA is extremely proud of these budding paddlers who upset higher seeded players on their way to glory and made GSTTA proud at national level,” he said.
