Indian men’s and women’s table tennis teams secure close wins in their respective second group ties at the ITTF World Team C’ships in London, England, on Wednesday.
The Indian men’s team came from behind to beat Slovakia 3-2, while the women’s team survived a scare to edge past Ukraine 3-2 and remained unbeaten in the tournament.
The women’s team had a good start to the tie, with experienced Manika Batra winning the opening match against Tetyana Bilenko in four games.
But then the world no.51 Margaryta Pesotska showed her quality and won both her singles matches, first against Yashaswini Ghorpade and then Manika.
Eventually, India came out on top as Divya Chitale in the third singles against Veronika and Yashaswini in her reverse singles match against Tetyana claimed a win.
Meanwhile, Indian men’s team had a poor start to the tie as Manush Shah conceded the opening match to world no.98 Lubomir Pistej in a close five-game affair.
After that, Manav Thakkar levelled the tie score with a comfortable win over Jakub Zelianka, but then Harmeet Desai lost in third singles and India again went behind in the tie.
Trailing 1-2, India still kept the hopes high, as both Manav and Manush claimed a straight-game win in the reverse singles to win their second consecutive tie.
India men will face Guatemala, and women will play Rwanda in the final group ties, where a win will take both of them into the knockout stage.
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