Ankur Bhattacharjee heroics in vain as Dabang Delhi beat Kolkata ThunderBlades 3-2 in UTT

Panaji, Jul 11 (PTI) Ankur Bhattacharjee made the shushing gesture, and hopped on to the table after blanking his senior India teammate G Sathiyan, but Sutirtha Mukherjee’s splendid showing gave Dabang Delhi TTC a 3-2 victory over Kolkata ThunderBlades in UTT here on Saturday. The Asian Games-bound Sutirtha showed a far better game plan and execution than her women’s doubles partner Ayhika, defeating her 3-0 (11-6, 11-2-, 11-7) to pull off a narrow victory for Delhi. Heading into the final match of the tie, Delhi were trailing 5-7 against Kolkata and needed a clean sweep in the women’s singles match, which Sutirtha delivered in a commanding manner. The two teams went head-to-head in the first two matches with the scoreline tied at 3-3, but a victory in the third match of mixed doubles for Delhi took them ahead by 5-4. In the first match, Delhi and Egypt player Youssef Abdelaziz recorded a 2-1 (6-11, 11-7, 11-4) win over Romania’s Eduard Ionescu in men’s singles. In the women’s singles, Kolkata’s Zeng Jian beat Maria Xiao 2-1 (11-3, 8-11, 11-9) to keep the tie evenly matched. Sathiyan paired up with Xiao to beat the Kolkata pair of Bhattacharjee and Zeng 2-1 (11-5, 7-11, 11-5) to keep Delhi ahead in the third match of mixed doubles. This was when an inspired Bhattacharjee turned the tables on Delhi with a fine display against Sathiyan, who will lead the Indian squad in the Asian Games. Forcing his senior into making several errors, Ankur rode on the confidence of winning the first game narrowly. But the 19-year-old Bhattacharjee grew in confidence to topple Sathiyan in the second and even as the latter fought back in the third game, the Kolkata player won the match 3-0 (11-10, 11-6, 11-10). PTI DDV UNG