K.V. Krishnamurthy (KVK), Dr. Sainath and Sushila Pillay, all veteran Table Tennis (TT) players from Mysuru, hit medals in the B. Narayan Rao Memorial Karnataka Vet TT Ranking Tournament held at Malleswaram Association in Bengaluru recently.

In Men’s 75-plus age group final, much fire work was expected. KVK and Dr. Sainath, both had won two matches each in League to fight the final.

KVK, a doyen player of Vet TT from Mysuru and also the eX-President of Mysore District TT Association, beat Dr. Sainath 3-0. It was one of those days when KVK could do nothing wrong. Every FH and BH attacking strokes of his found the table corners leaving Dr. Sainath stranded without a reply. A very creditable performance by KVK.

In an earlier round, Dr. Sainath playing against Gopalan created a record of some sort.

Gopalan, an ex-National Team Gold winner in 75-year group, playing his consistent game was leading 2 games to 1 and 10-4 in the fourth game needing just a single point to win the match.

Dr. Sainath turned the table in front of the spell bound spectators by winning 8 consecutive points to win the 4th game and went on to win the 5th game and the match.

Sushila could not repeat her last two tournament’s performance of beating Lathika, who countered successfully every attacking move by Sushila and also brought in many FH smashes for a comfortable 3-0 win in the final. Lathika is used to getting Gold repeatedly over the years. It was the third consecutive Silver for Sushila, who is relatively a newcomer to TT.

RESULTS – FINALS

MEN — 75+: K.V. Krishnamurthy bt Dr. Sainath Iyer 3-0, 70+: V.R. Vaidya bt Udayashankar Rao 3-1; 65+: Vishu Botta bt Mahesh Nayak 3-1; 60+: S. Srishaila bt Robin D’Souza 3-2;
50+: S.S. Sundeep bt K. Chandrashekar 3-2; 40+: M.K. Shivakumar bt Ganapathi Pai 3-0.

Women — 60+: Lathika Poosalingam bt Sushila D. Pillay 3-0; 50+: Bhavana Harne bt V. Nagarathna 3-0; 40+: Anjana Rao bt Sowmya Sandeep 3-2.

Open Doubles — 40+: Ganapathi Pai & Vasudev Kallapur bt M.K. Shivakumar & D.P. Gopinath 3-1; 60+: S. Srishaila & R. Prasad bt B.R.N. Raju & Kuppu Rao 3-0.