ITTF Qatar Open 2020: Sathiyan Gnanasekaran and Anthony Amalraj one win away from entering main draw

What's the story?

India's ace paddlers Sathiyan Gnanasekaran and Anthony Amalraj are one win away from entering the main draw in the Men's Singles of the 2020 ITTF World Tour Platinum, Qatar Open.

The background

The Qatar Open has been categorised as a World Tour Platinum tournament and the 2020 edition will have a massive prize money of $400,000 overall.

A total of seven Indians, namely Sathiyan Gnanasekaran, Anthony Amalraj, Snehit Suravajjula, Harmeet Desai, Sushmit Sriram, Jeet Chandra, and Mudit Dani, were in the fray in the Preliminary Round of the Men's Singles.

Here are the Preliminary Round 1 results:

Sathiyan Gnanasekaran got a Bye

Anthony Amalraj defeated Qatar's Fahed Almudhanne 4-0

Snehit Suravajjula lost 0-4 to China's Xu Haidong

Harmeet Desai lost 1-4 to China's An Yan

Sushmit Sriram lost 1-4 to Spain's Alvaro Robles

Jeet Chandra lost 0-4 to Germany's Benedikt Duda

Mudit Dani lost 0-4 to Denmark's Anders Lind

The heart of the matter

Sathiyan Gnanasekaran and Anthony Amalraj were the only two Indians who were able to progress to the Preliminary Round 2.

In Round 2, Chennai-born Sathiyan defeated Japanese paddler Shunsuke Togami 11-3, 7-11, 11-9, 11-4, 11-8 [4-1 overall] in a match that lasted exactly 39 minutes.

Meanwhile, the experienced Anthony faced a stern test against Russia's Kirill Skachkov in his Round 2 match. The 34-year-old kept his composure to defeat his Russian counterpart 11-6, 12-14, 11-5, 11-7, 13-11, 11-7 [4-2 overall].

What's next?

Sathiyan will now be locking horns with Alvaro Robles of Spain in his Preliminary Round 3 match. Meanwhile, Amalraj will be taking on Polish paddler Marek Badowski next. Both these matches will take place at (approx) 10:40 pm IST.

If both the Indians manage to win their respective fixtures, then they will enter the main draw of the prestigious Qatar Open. The main draw will start on March 5.