Gujarat athletes shine at national meets

AHMEDABAD: Gujarat paddlers shone bright at the National Ranking Table Tennis Championship which concluded in Chandigarh recently. The best of the lot was Surat-based Petroleum Sports Promotion Board Academy's paddler Manav Thakkar who claimed the junior and youth boys' titles. After crushing Jeet Chandra (WB) 4-1 (13-11, 11-6, 9-11, 11-3, 11-2) in the junior boys' final, the 16-year-old accounted for Arjun Ghosh (WB) 4-1 (11-9, 8-11, 11-9, 11-5, 11-7) to grab the youth boys' title.Fresh from winning silver at the ITTF World Polish Junior & Cadet Open last month, Manav was in total control of the match against Ghosh. Another Surat paddler leaving his mark was Surat's Harmeet Desai who went down to Sanil Shetty of Maharashtra 2-4 (6-11, 11-13, 11-5, 11-13, 11-5, 13-15) in men's semifinal and had to content with a bronze. Vadodara's Manush Shah too settled for bronze in the junior boys' category.
Other athletes too brought laurels to the state. Swimmer Aryan Nehra grabbed silver medal in the boys' Group III 200m medley event at the 33rd Sub-Junior National Aquatic Championship in Bangalore. He clocked 2.30.97 to finish behind Swadesh Mondal of Bengal. Shoan Ganguly of Karnataka took bronze. Having won a bronze earlier, Aryan finishes with two medals from the event.
Bringing in more joy were two Gujarat walkers-Babubhai Panocha and Sagar Joshi. Panocha took 1.31.26 to walk away with gold medal in the 20k walk event at the on-going 56th National Inter-State Senior Athletic Championship in Hyderabad. His statemate Sagar from Ahmedabad clocked 1.31.30 to grab the silver medal.