In the absence of big names of Indian Table Tennis (Sharath Kamal, Manika Batra, Sreeja Akula) , a young Indian team Pritha Vartikar, Jeet Chandra, Snehit Suravajjula, Yashaswini Ghorpade defeated the Aussie team 8-6 but missed out on qualifying for the knockout stage.
China topped Group 1 , whereas India, Australia and USA were tied on second spot with one win each , but the USA team by virtue of better games win to loss ratio qualified for the knockout stage along with China.
Having lost to USA 3-8 and to China 0-8 , Indian Team faced Australia in the final group match. Pritha Vartikar and Jeet Chandra began the match for India Losing 1-2 (8-11,3-11,11-8) to Finn Luu and Jian Fang Lay , thus trailing 1:2.
In the second game Yashashwini Ghorpade lost to Constantina 1-2 ( 11-13,12-10,6-11), thus making the consolidated scoreline 4-2 in favour of Aussies. Snehit tasted the first blood winning 2-1 (11-6,9-11,11-7) in men’s singles.
The scoreboard now said 5-4 in favour of the Aussies. Snehit and Jeet doubled up to win the next game 2-1 ( 11-8,10-12,11-9). The scoreline was now tied at 6 games each. India needed to win the last game 2-0 as the first team to win 8 games would clinch the match. Pritha and Yashaswini did what the doctor ordered winning 2-0 (11-8,11-7) over Psihogios and Jian Fang Lay, taking India
to a 8-6 memorable win.
In some sports and disciplines more than winning medals and tournaments what matters is improvement and table tennis is showing huge prospects.
Fingers crossed we stay on track for first ever TT medal from next games.
