Ajmer: Rajasthan’s Zubin Kumar played his heart out, beating the country’s top two paddlers Achanta Sharath Kamal and Soumyadeep Roy, but his efforts went in vain as PSPB scraped through to the men’s team finals at the 68th National Table Tennis Championships here on Friday.

PSPB will now take on Railways Sports Promotion Board (RSPB) in the summit clash on Saturday. However in the women’s team event, PSPB had no trouble getting past Tamil Nadu 3-0 to set up a final against RSPB, who got the better off North Bengal 3-1.

PSPB, who were aiming for a 3-0 whitewash, looked well on course after Sharath thrashed Devesh Arya 11-6, 11-8, 11-6 but the tables turned soon as skipper Soumyadeep gave up a two games lead to go down to Zubin.

The PSPB stalwart completely lost the plot in the next three games as he went down 11-9, 11-7, 3-11, 9-11, 8-11.

In the other semi-final, RSPB blanked Bengal 3-0 to enter the finals. Anirban Nandi, Sourav Chakraborty and A. Amal Raj won their respective games to see their team through.

While Anirban beat Shubham Choudhary 11-5, 9-11, 14-12, 11-4, Sourav came back from a game down to defeat Shibaji Dutta 7-11, 11-6, 11-6, 12-10. Amal then registered a comfortable 13-11, 11-4, 11-9 win in the third match to complete the 3-0 rout.In the women’s event, Poulami Ghatak, reigning singles champion Mouma Das and Shamini Kumaresan won their matches against V. Nivedita, J. Swarna and M. Aparna as PSPB booked their place in the summit clash.

North Bengal, on the other hand, were left to rue the poor form of their star player Nandita Saha, who lost both her matches as Anindita Chakraborty led from the front for RSPB, winning against Kasturi Chakraborty and the crucial fourth game against Saha to see them through.

Mouma and Poulami earlier paired up to beat Charu and Meenakshi of Punjab 11-6, 11-4, 11-4 to enter the third round of the women’s doubles competition. (PTI)