Vadodara: India’s Priyanuj Bhattacharya and Japan’s Miku Matshusima registered contrasting victories to clinch the U-19 boys’ and U-19 girls’ singles titles in the WTT Youth Contender 2026, presented by Sports Authority of Gujarat, at the SAMA Indoor Sports Complex in Vadodara on Monday.
Sreejani Chakraborty and Aditya Das were crowned the U-15 girls’ and U-15 boys’ champions, while Aadya Baheti and Rajdeep Biswas won the titles in the U-11 category.
The second edition of the WTT Youth Contender in Vadodara, presented by the Sports Authority of Gujarat, is being hosted by the Table Tennis Association of Baroda and implemented by UTT and featured a total of 226 players competing across U-11 to U-19 age categories.
In the U-19 boys’ final, Priyanuj kept his nerves during clutch points to beat Sarthak Arya 12-10, 11-8, 14-12, while Miku fought back from a 1-2 deficit to beat top seed Divyanshi Bhowmick 11-6, 9-11, 9-11, 11-8, 11-3.
The boys’ top seed, Abhinandh Pradhivadhi, was knocked out in the quarterfinals by Naman Bhatnagar, who then lost to Priyanuj in the semifinals.
In the girls’ U-19 category, Miku knocked out another top Indian junior, Jennifer Varghese, 6-11, 12-10, 8-11, 11-4, 11-7 in the semifinals.
Jennifer had earlier defeated defending champion Syndrela Das in the quarterfinals. Syndrela had earlier won the girls’ U-17 singles and U-19 mixed doubles titles in this edition of WTT Youth Contender.
Earlier, Aadya defeated Sakshya Santosh 15-13, 11-8, 12-10 to win the girls U-11 title, while Biswas got the better of Sharvil Karambelkar 11-8, 11-6, 11-13, 11-4 to win the U-11 boys singles final.
In the boys’ U-15 event, top seed Aditya Das dominated the final against Sanjay Jagdish to register an 11-4, 11-9, 11-8 win. On the other hand, the girls’ U-15 final went to the wire with Sreejani prevailing 8-11, 11-8, 7-11, 11-7, 11-5.
In the boys’ U-15 event, Vivaan Dave defeated Rishaan Chattopadhyay 9-11, 11-9, 11-6, 11-3 to advance to the quarterfinals. He will now face Rudra Jena, who got the better of U-13 boys’ singles champion Dev Pranav Bhatt 11-4, 11-8, 11-5.
The U-15 girls’ singles top seed Ankolika Chakraborty, second seed Naisha Rewaskar, and the up-and-coming Tanishka Kalbhairav also booked their last eight spot with comfortable wins over their respective opponents.
(IANS)
