Chennai, Feb 10 (IANS) Young table tennis stars Tanishka Kalbhairav and Naisha Rewaskar registered convincing victories in their respective women’s singles matches to reach the final qualifying round of the World Table Tennis (WTT) Star Contender Chennai 2026, which kicked off at the Tamil Nadu Physical Education and Sports University in Chennai on Tuesday.

The 13-year-old Tanishka upset the experienced Maria Rony 3-1 (11-2, 8-11, 11-7, 11-4) in the second qualifying round while Naisha, who trains at the NSCI-UTT Academy in Mumbai, defeated wildcard entrant Palak Ghia 3-0 (11-3, 11-8, 11-6) to advance to the final qualifying round of the second edition of the WTT Star Contender Chennai, which boasts of an enhanced prize purse of USD 300,000.

Earlier, Gungun Sahu upset a much higher-ranked Hardee Patel 3-1 (12-10, 8-11, 11-9, 12-10) to move to the final round of qualifying.

In the men’s singles category, India’s Umesh Kumar fought back from a game down to pack off Nepal’s Rajiv Chikanbanjar 3-1 (6-11, 11-3, 11-5, 11-8) to reach the third qualifying round.

Also advancing to the final qualifying round were wildcard entrants Punit Biswas and Balamurgan Rajasekaran. Biswas defeated compatriot Arjav Gupta 3-1 (11-7, 11-6, 9-11, 11-8) while Balamurgan beat Neil Mulye 3-0 (11-5, 13-11, 11-9) in the second qualifying round.

The second round of qualifying will continue on Wednesday morning with the top-ranked men’s singles player in the qualifying draw, Ankur Bhattacharjee, taking on the Korea Republic’s Oh Seunghwan, who defeated Rajesh Ramanathan 11-5, 11-4, 11-4 in the first qualifying round.

The other interesting match-ups include wild card Shivjit Lamba taking on Italy’s Carlo Rossi in the men’s singles second qualifying round.

–IANS

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