Manipal: In a fiercely contested event featuring more than a hundred individual paddlers, Manipal Institute of Technology (MIT) and Kasturba Medical College (KMC), Mangalore clinched the men’s and women’s team titles at the annual Manipal University Inter-Collegiate Table Tennis Tournament held at the MIT Badminton Court here on Sunday.
The tournament was conducted on the lines of the Swaythling Cup (World Table Tennis Championships), where each tie consisted of three singles and two reverse singles, with the team to reach 3 wins first being adjudged winners of the tie. Each individual match of a tie was played in the best of five format, with each game being a run to 11 points. Fifteen teams participated in the women’s category while seventeen teams grappled for the men’s team title.
Coming into the women’s final off a breezy 3-0 victory over Manipal College of Pharmaceutical Sciences (MCOPS), KMC Mangalore handed MIT A a defeat by the same margin to register their third successive title win. KMC’s paddlers looked in top-form as they dropped just two individual sets to ensure a final scoreline of 3-1, 3-1, 3-0.
Emphasizing on the importance of proper practice in the run-up to the tournament, KMC’s Isha Nirgudkar said, “One has to practice throughout the year, as playing for just two weeks before the tournament does not help. A lot of experimentation goes on during our practice sessions where we look to play different players each day and try to come up with unique styles of services and strokes.”
The men more than made up for the ladies’ final defeat as MIT A and MIT B secured comprehensive 3-0 wins over Department of Commerce (DOC) and School of Allied Health Sciences (SOAHS) respectively in the semifinals, to set up an all-MIT final. The final though, was a drab one-sided affair as MIT B proved no match for their visibly superior college counterparts. MIT A took just under 30 minutes to wrap up proceedings with a comprehensive 3-1, 3-1, 3-0 victory.
Though initially planned to be played over the course of two days, the tournament was wrapped up on the first day itself. This was done to set aside one day solely for the University Table Tennis team trials, according to officials.