Thaindian News

Manama (Bahrain), Nov 18 (IANS) Soumyajit Ghosh, Sourav Saha and Harmeet Desai won their first-round boys’ singles at the Volkswagen World Junior Table Tennis Championships here while Ankita Das defeated her Egyptian rival to move into the second round of the girls category.

Ghosh and Desai, however, tasted defeat in the quarterfinals of the boys doubles held Friday, losing to top-seed Japanese duo of Koki Niwa and Maharu Yoshimura 7-11, 11-6, 3-11, 8-11, 8-11.

Ghosh and Desai had earlier beaten the English pair of Sean Cullen and Liam Pitchford 10-12, 11-8, 11-5, 11-8 in the pre-quarters. The other Indian pair of G. Sathyan and Sourav Saha lost to the Belgian duo of Jullien Indeherberg and Emilien Vanrossomme 11-4, 4-11, 5-11, 5-11 in the second round.

In the girls doubles, Manika Batra and Mallika Bhandarkar downed the Swede pair of Linda Bergstorm and Maria Engleson 11-7, 13-11, 11-9 in the second hurdle, but lost to Nina Mittleham and Petrissa Solja of Germany 4-11, 6-11, 3-11 in the round of 16.

Ghosh, who accounted for world No. 154 Florian Wanger 12-10, 11-4, 11-6, 11-4 of Germany in straight games will take on Taipei’s Chia-Sheng Lee in the second round later in the day. Similarly, Desai plays Belgian Cedric Nuytinck in his next round while Saha meets Liam Pitchford of England.

Desai, who struggled to start with, clawed his way back after losing the first two games to beat his Japanese opponent Asuka Sakai 4-3 (9-11, 5-11,11-6,11-7,11-8,8-11,10-12). It was a see-saw battle for Desai after the Japanese went ahead 3-2 taking the third, fourth and fifth games before the Indian pulled up his socks to win the last two games.

For Saha, however, it was rather easy as he downed Argentine Pablo Saragovi 4-1 (12-10, 8-11, 11-4, 11-4, 11-4) to move into the round of 32.

Ankita defeated Nadeey Dawlatly 11-9, 11-6, 5-11, 12-10, 11-6 and will run into Bernadette Szocs in the second round.