JAMMU, January 18: There was a spate of upsets in the men's section -- from seventh seed Himansh P Kala to 14th seed Subhajit Saha -- as the open events of the 59th National Table Tennis Championships began at the Jammu University campus, here, today.There were as many as seven seeds who fell by the wayside in the men's section. The top six seeds survived the crash to move into the pre-quarterfinals which will be played tomorrow morning.
The women's section, however, saw no casualties in the singles events, which witnessed all top seeds sail into the pre-quarterfinals. Ninth seed Niyati got a walkover.
The day's upsets began in the morning with V Srinivasan of Indian Airlines. Srinivasan lost to Delhi's Ajay Jha in straight games in the first round. Jha, however, could not advance further, losing in four games to veteran C R Anand of Karnataka in the next round.
There was more to come as four fancied players -- Rajdeep Saha, S Ramaswamy, Shibajit Dutta, and Jacob Prem Kumar -- failed to advance.
Veteran V Ramaswamy went down to Chandigarh's Harish Kumar in five games after leading by two games. The Chandigarh lad put up a brave front in the second round before losing in five games to T K Das.
Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
