NAGPUR: Indian paddler Achanta Sharath Kamal suffered a 6-11, 4-11, 8-11 defeat against World No. 7 Lin Yun-Ju of Chinese Taipei in the men’s singles pre-quarters as Indian challenge came to an end in the World Table Tennis (WTT) Contender Doha on Thursday.
The World No. 32 Sharath, who was playing his first international tournament after a year’s break due to the pandemic, couldn’t gain momentum despite showing good resistance in the latter part of the match against higher-ranked Yun-Ju.
With Sharath’s loss, the Indian challenge came to an end after the men’s doubles pair and women’s singles paddlers lost their respective outings in the tournament.
In the mixed-doubles category, French pair of Emmanuel Lebesson and Nan Jia Yuan were given a walkover against India’s Gnanasekaran Sathiyan and Sutirtha Mukherjee in the Round-of-16 match.
However, in the men’s doubles pre-quarters, Sharath and Sathiyan suffered a 12-14, 7-11, 3-11 defeat at the hand of Gaston Alto and Horacio Cifuentes.
Earlier Manika Batra and Sreeja Akula also lost their respective final qualifying round matches in the women’s singles category.
While Batra went down fighting to World No. 69 Ganna Gaponova 5-11, 6-11, 14-12, 5-11, Akula, who had outclassed World No. 74 Vega Paulina of Chile in the earlier round, made her Russian opponent Mariia Tailkova work hard and almost got the momentum shifted in her favour with a come-from-behind 2-1 lead before losing the exciting tie 9-11, 11-5, 11-6, 6-11, 5-11.