Asian Table Tennis Championships: India assured of two more medals

India were assured of two more bronze medals in the ongoing Asian Table Tennis Championships after the men's doubles pair of Achanta Sharath Kamal and Sathiyan Gnanasekaran along with Harmeet Desai and Manav Thakkar stormed into the semi-finals on Sunday.

The Indian men's table tennis team had already won a bronze in the ongoing Asian Table Tennis Championships last week.

Sharath and Sathiyan beat Chew Zhe Yu Clarence and Beh Kun Ting of Singapore 3-0 in their quarter-final match, winning 3-0 (11-9, 11-7, 12-10). Later, Harmeet Desai and Manav Thakkar beat Alamian Nima and Alamiyan Noshad of Iran 3-0 (12-10, 11-5, 11-6). Both quarter-finals lasted just about 20 minutes each.

Sharath and Sathiyan were clinical from the start and won 14 points on their serve and 17 off their opponents' serve as they cruised to an easy victory in contrast to the pre-quarterfinals.

In the pre-quarterfinals, the Indian table tennis duo were taken to five sets by Kazakhstan's Alan Kurmangaliyev and Kirill Gerassimenko. The Indians table tennis pair, however, prevailed to claim a hard-fought 3-2 (11-9, 11-6, 9-11, 8-11, 11-7) win.

Meanwhile, the second Indian men's table tennis doubles pair of Harmeet Desai and Manav Thakkar also sailed to the semi-finals with convincing wins over Indonesia.

With both the pairs reaching the semi-finals, India are assured of two medals as a place in the semi-finals assures a medal at the Asian Table Tennis Championships.

Mixed results for India's table tennis players in singles

Meanwhile, Sharath Kamal and Sathiyan kept the Indian flag flying in the singles section too, beating lower-ranked opponents in the round of 32. However, it was the end of the road for both Sanil Shetty and Manav Thakkar as they lost their respective matches.

Sharath Kamal got the better of Sokhiri Dzhalil of Tajikistan 3-0 in straight games, winning 11-6, 11-3, 11-4, while Sathiyan lost a game but came out unscathed beating Ahmad Khalil Al-Mohannadi of Qatar 3-1 (11-2, 11-6, 7-11, 11-9).

Meanwhile, Sanil Shetty went down to Japan's Shunsuke Togami in a hard-fought match, losing 2-3 after coming back from a game down twice as the match ended with a 7-11, 11-9, 13-11, 9-11, 9-11 scoreline. Thakkar took a game off Kazakhstan's Kiril Gerassimenko and he was beaten 1-3 (10-12, 5-11, 11-8, 13-11).

The women's pair of Sutirtha Mukherjee and Ayhika Mukherjee went down fighting to Minami Ando and Miyu Nagasaki 2-3 in the quarter-finals. The Indian pair, which had defeated Chen Szu-Yu and Li Yu-Jun of Chinese Taipei 3-1 in the pre-quarters, came back strongly after losing the first two games to level scores at 2-2. But they could not maintain the momentum in the decider as they lost 4-11, 5-11, 11-4, 11-7, 8-11 in a 34-minute encounter.

Indian women's table tennis players faced setbacks in the singles event, too, as Ayhika Mukherjee, Akula Sreeja and Archana Kamath ended their campaign with defeats in the round of 32.