SHAYAN Siraj went through the entire competition unbeaten to take the gold medal at the Junior National Cup.
The event sees 10 of the highest-ranked young players in the country invited by Table Tennis England to compete against each other on a round-robin basis.
The Bramhope youngster was top seed and lived up to billing by winning all nine of his matches.
He lost only four games in his opening six matches at the two-day event in Enfield, but survived a real test against the fourth-ranked player Gaurav Aravind in the seventh round, coming from 3-1 down to win 4-3 (9-11, 11-7, 10-12, 8-11, 11-8, 11-8, 11-3).
Siraj then finished strongly by beating third seed Ethan Walsh 4-2 (11-13, 11-4, 11-6, 6-11, 11-7, 12-10) and second seed James Smith 4-1 (11-2, 11-8, 11-13, 11-9, 11-8) in his final two matches.
The 16-year-old, who attends Grantham College, felt it was important to show his ability after a disappointing singles competition at the Junior National Championships last month, where he was also top seed but went out in the last 16.
He said: “After the Nationals, I worked on a few things that I was weaker on in my game and I think that’s why I performed well here.
“It doesn’t make up for the Nationals because that’s the big one, but it’s obviously still good to win gold.”
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