World Team TT: Indian men's team defeats world no. 2 Germany

Story by  ATV | Posted by  Nakul Shivani • 1 Years ago
Sathiyan Gnanasekaran
Sathiyan Gnanasekaran

 

Chengdu

The Indian men's team continued its winning streak at the ongoing World Team Table Tennis Championship, defeating Germany in their second Group 2 match of the tournament on Sunday.

India defeated the Tokyo Olympics silver medalist 3-1.

Sathiyan Gnanasekaran started off for India against Germany's Benedikt Duda. Sathiyan was off to a bad start, losing his first two sets by 11-13, 4-11. However, the highest-ranked Indian TT player kept his nerves and made his way back into the game with wins in two sets by 11-8, 11-4. With things even at 2-2, he secured the closely fought final set by 11-9.

In the next game, India's Harmeet Desai locked horns against Qiu Dang.

Desai lost the first two sets, before bouncing back to win a highly competitive third set. He lost the final set, losing the match 1-3 (7-11, 9-11, 13-11, 3-11) to Dang.

Manav Thakkar was the next up for India, hoping to turn this deadlock in his nation's favour against Ricardo Walther.

Thakkar started fantastically, winning the first set by 13-11, before losing the next one by 6-11. Thakkar kept his calm and finished the next two sets with a win by 11-8, 12-10 to seal the game 3-1.

India led 2-1 after this win.

Gnanasekaran was back in action in a highly crucial fourth game against Dang, who had defeated Desai.

He started off with losses in two sets by 10-12, 7-11. He made a remarkable comeback in the next three sets, winning them by 11-8, 11-8, and 11-9.

With this victory, India sealed the match 3-1.

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The Indian men's table tennis team had made a winning start to their campaign at the championship in China with a win over Uzbekistan in their first Group 2 match of the tournament on Saturday.