DOHA: Both the men's doubles teams in the fray in the Asian Table Tennis Championships won their respective quarter-final matches with an identical margin, making it to the semi-finals and assuring India two medals in the competition.
Achanta Sharath Kamal and G Sathiyan, the higher-ranked team, defeated Chew Zhe Yu Clarence and Beh Kun Ting of Singapore 3-0 in their quarter-final match, winning 11-9, 11-7, 12-10 in just 22 minutes on Sunday.
They were joined in the semis by compatriots Harmeet Desai and Manav Thakkar, who overcame Alamian Nima and Alamiyan Noshad of Iran 3-0 (12-10, 11-5, 11-6) in 19 minutes.
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 the 34-minute encounter.
Sharath and Sathiyan 14 points on their serve and 17 off their opponents' serve as they cruised to an easy victory. On Saturday, they were taken to five sets by Kazakhastan's Alan Kurmangaliyev and Kirill Gerassimenko in the pre-quarters. The Indians, however, ended with a hard-fought 3-2 (11-9, 11-6, 9-11, 8-11, 11-7) win. Desai and Thakkar also sailed to the last eight with convincing wins over Saudi Arabia and Indonesian pairs. IANS
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