Glasgow, Aug 1 (IANS) India’s men’s doubles pair of Achanta Sharath Kamal and Anthony Amalraj made it to the semi-finals beating England’s Danny Reed and Sam Walker in the table tennis quarterfinal in the 2014 Commonwealth Games at the Scotstoun Sports Campus here Thursday.
Sharath Kamal and Amalraj won 12-10, 11-6, 7-11, 11-8 against the English pair in the quarterfinal. They had beaten Wales Ryan Jenkins and Stephen Jenkins 11-8, 11-4, 11-9 in the fourth round.
The other men’s doubles pair of Saumyajit Ghosh and Harmeet Desai lost their quarterfinal match. They went down 10-12, 9-11, 8-11 and 8-11 to the Singaporean pair of Ning Gao and Hu Li.
In the singles, Sharath Kamal, Ghosh and Desai both won their respective second round matches. Sharath Kamal beat Northern Ireland’s Ashley Robinson 11-7, 11-4, 11-6, 11-5 while Desai had to fight it out for a 11-4, 7-11, 11-13, 9-11, 11-6, 11-3, 11-5 against Australia’s David Powell. Ghosh beat Canada’s Pierre-Luc Theriault 13-11, 12-10, 11-6, 11-7.
It was also the end of road for the mixed doubles pair of Sharath Kamal and Shamini Kumaresan. The duo went down 7-11, 9-11, 11-5, 14-12 and 11-4 to the English pair of Reed and Kelly Sibley in the quarterfinals.
The Indian duo recorded a hard fought 11-6, 8-11, 4-11, 13-11, 11-7 win over Australian pair David Powell and Jian Fang Lay in the Round of 16.
The Indian team started brightly taking the first game in just five minutes. Powell and Lay, though, hit back ferociously, winning the next two games in a total time of 11 minutes.
The crucial fourth game saw a great battle between the two teams and just when it seemed Australia would seal the game and the match, Sharath and Shamini came back from the dead to narrowly take the game.
The Indian team seemed to carry forward their momentum from the previous game and romped to a 11-7 win in seven minutes.
Anthony Amalraj and Madhurika Patkar also lost in the fourth round of the mixed doubles table tennis.
The Indian pair lost 2-3 (11-7, 3-11, 10-12, 11-7, 4-11) to Singapore’s Ning Gao and Ye Lin in 32 minutes.
It was a topsy-turvy match for the Indian team, who won the first game in five minutes but lost the next two in a combined time of 11 minutes.
Amalraj and Madhurika came back strongly in the fourth to take the match into the final game.
But when it mattered most, the Singapore duo brought their game and took just five minutes to dump the Indian team out.
