Indian women’s team sparkles with victory to kick off campaign

The Indian women’s table tennis team started off their campaign with a hard-fought win over Singapore in their Group F match at the ongoing Asian Games on Friday. India beat Singapore by 3-2. In the first match of the tie, Ayhika Mukherjee took on Jian Zeng in women’s singles competition. Jian won the game by 3-1 (7-11, 11-2, 11-7, and 12-10) to give Singapore a 1-0 lead. In the second match of the tie, Manika Batra took on Jingyi Zhou in another women’s singles match. Batra reversed the fortunes of Singapore, levelling the score-line 1-1 with a 3-1 win over the Singaporean (11-9, 9-11, 11-7, 11-3). Sreeja Akula took on Ru Xin Wong in the third match of the tie. This match was a hard-fought won but Sreeja won it by 3-2 (12-14, 11-9, 8-11, 11-9, 11-7). With this, the score-line turned in India’s favour at 2-1. However, Singapore refused to go down without a fight. Jian defeated Manika by 3-2 in a hard-fought match (11-3, 3-11, 12-10, 10-12, 12-10) to level the score-line at 2-2. In the final match of the tie, Ayhika beat Zhou by 3-1 (11-7, 11-8, 9-11, 11-5) to seal a 3-2 win for India. Now, India will next take on Nepal on Saturday.

Indian men’s team
The Indian men’s table tennis team of Sathiyan Gnanasekaran, Achanta Sharath Kamal and Harmeet Desai started its campaign on a dominating note, defeating Yemen 3-0. Playing at the GSP Gymnasium Table 7, India demolished Yemen in its campaign opener. Sathiyan won the first match of the tie to register a dominating 11-3,11-2,11-6 triumph over Ali Omar Ahmed of Yemen in just 13 minutes. The victory gave India a 1-0 lead. In the second match of the tie, Sharath produced a spectacular performance 11-3, 11-4, 11-6 to help India take a 2-0 lead over Yemen. The Indian ace took just 17 minutes to quash the challenge from Yemen’s Ebrahim Abdulhakim Mohamm Gubran. Harmeet Desai sealed the deal for India as he gave his team a comfortable 3-0 victory over Yemen. Although Harmeet was offered the first two games 11-1, 11-1, on a platter, Magd Ahmed Ali Aldhubhani made the Indian’s life a bit difficult in the potential decider. However, the decider, six minutes long, eventually went 11-7 in favour of Harmeet.