Final day flourish not enough

Though the players of Palolic Club of Bangladesh had a tremendous outing on the final day of the Advocate Golam Mostafa Memorial South Asian Club Table Tennis Championship as they won all their respective games at the MA Aziz Stadium in Chittagong yesterday, the end result was third place.

India's Bengal Club retained the mantle of South Asian Champions while Nepal's HUAWEI Club climbed a step to finish runners-up.

Yesterday, Palolic club faced Sri Lanka's TT Club and Maldives' SRC and won both the matches by 3-1 and 3-0 sets respectively.

Palolic Club's El-Sayed Lashin and local champion Manash Chowdhury played fiercely on the final day but the end result was predetermined by losses to Bengal Club and HUAWEI Club earlier in the tournament.

This result seemed to be an obvious one for Manash, the five time national table tennis champion of Bangladesh who said that their chances of winning against Nepal were 50-50.

“We knew India would be tough and we did not have much expectation of winning against them. But we could have beat Nepal, maybe it's just that luck did not favour us. And obviously Nepal came a far way,” Manash said.

Palolic Club coach Mohammad Ali echoed Manash's sentiments.

“Our boys played what they usually play. If a better result had to be achieved, a lot of things should be changed inside the federation. First of all, ensuring professionalism our players have to think about their living after the tournament ends. India provides such facilities to their players, the result is made obvious by that,” opined Ali while lamenting the defeat to Nepal.

On the other hand, HUAWEI Club coach Sanjay Aryal rejoiced at their achievement of becoming the runners-up for the first time in a South Asian tournament.