Calcutta: The top players in the men's and women's sections had it easy as they entered the singles pre-quarter finals of the All India Inter Institutional table tennis championship here on Saturday.
The ninth seeded Devesh Karia of CRSB lost to unseeded Sivananda Seshadri of FCI while thirteenth seed Sourav Chakraborty of PSPB suffered a similar fate at the hands of Souvik Basu Roy of RSPB. In the other matches, holder Anthony Amalraj, A. Sharath Kamal had smooth sailing.
In the women's event, fourth seed and Olympian Ankita Das snatched victory from the jaws of defeat. It was a remarkable recovery by Ankita as she was trailing A.V. Nivedita of the Airports Authority of India 1-3.
But Nivedita committed some mistakes in the fifth game and Ankita seized the initiative. In the end, she beat her opponent 9-11, 7-11, 11-3, 11-7, 11-6, 5-11, 11-7. Mamata Prabhu also suffered a scare. She was down 0-3 against PSPB's Narasimha Priya. But she came back strongly to win 8-11, 9-11, 12-14, 11-3, 11-2, 11-9, 11-9.
Reigning national champion Poulomi Ghatak was stretched to six games by Indian Bank's Sumana R Krishnan, while PSPB's Nandita Saha lost to RSPB's Takeme Sarkar and Kasturi Chakraborty, also of PSPB.