National Table Tennis Championships 2025: Delhi youngster Payas beats top seed Sathiyan to enter semifinals; TN wins men’s doubles gold

National Table Tennis Championships 2025: Delhi youngster Payas beats top seed Sathiyan to enter semifinals; TN wins men’s doubles gold

An action-packed penultimate day of the 86th Senior National Table Tennis Championship started off with the second seeds in men’s and women’s singles – Harmeet Desai and Swastika Ghosh, respectively – bowing out in the round of 32. And the day of upsets was capped off with Payas Jain – the promising youngster from Delhi – dominating top seed G. Sathiyan to enter the men’s semifinal.

After having squandered three match-points against the same opponent in the team championship semifinal, Payas consistently outclassed Sathiyan, managing a knee niggle, in terms of strength and pace to win in straight games.

Payas will now face unseeded Divyansh Srivastava, the giant-slayer from Uttar Pradesh who entered the top-four after halting Sanil Shetty’s (who beat Harmeet) march. Divyansh will thus become a rare men’s player with a long-pimpled backhand rubber to enter the semis.

In the women’s singles, 15-year-old Syndrela Das emerged as a giant-killer to set up a semifinal clash against seventh seed Diya Chitale.

P.B. Abhinandh and S. Preyesh Raj – the right- and left-handed combination from Tamil Nadu – superceded their last year’s bronze medal-winning performance by going all the way in the men’s doubles category. Abhinandh and Preyesh – the Chennai charmers – outclassed Bengal’s Sourav Saha and Aniket Sen Choudhary 3-1 in the final.

S. Selenadeepthi and Yashini Sivashankar gave TN a second medal after bowing out of the women’s doubles semifinal.