Tokyo, May 2: India’s men bowed out of the World Team Table Tennis Championships after they were blanked out by Egypt 0-3 in Stage 2 of the second division here today.
This would mean that the men’s team, which had finished 27th in the last worlds two years ago in Germany, will end up in the 32-36 brackets this time.
Indeed, this was a climb down for a team that was expected to do better here. Nevertheless, one must give credit to the Egyptians for the way they played here, first overcoming a stiff resistance from Sharath Kamal and then taming both Soumyajit Ghosh and Harmeet Desai, in that order for a 3-0 score.
Sharath, though began on a losing note, caught up with his rival Omar Assar nicely to lead 2-1 at the end of the third game. But the Indian was definitely on some sort of trouble against Assar as the Egyptian ran up a good lead to put his opponent on mat. Having levelled the score, Assar went all out against Sharath in the fifth and clinched it earlier than one had anticipated to win 11-8, 5-11, 7-11, 11-4, 11-6.(PTI)
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