CWG: Sharath in TT men's singles semis; Harmeet, Sathiyan ousted

India's Achanta Sharath Kamal stormed into the semi-finals of the men's singles table tennis competition even as his compatriots Harmeet Desai and Sathiyan Gnanasekaran lost their respective quarter-finals to crash out of the 21st Commonwealth Games here on Friday.

Sharath beat England's Liam Pitchford 4-2 to advance to the last four while Harmeet lost 0-4 to Nigerian Quadri Aruna, and Sathiyan lost 0-4 to England's Samuel Walker.

Sharath bounced back from a game down to prevail 4-2 (9-11, 13-11, 10-12, 11-9, 11-7, 11-9) over the Englishman in the second quarter-final of the day.

After going down in the opening game, Sharath bounced back hard in the second which too went down to the wire at the Oxenford Studios here.

In the third game, the Indian put up a spirited fight but somehow failed to get over the line but managed to get his focus back in the next three games to pocket the match and make his way to the last four.

In the semi-finals on Saturday, Sharath will be up against Nigerian Quadri Aruna.

Meanwhile, it was curtains for Harmeet, losing his quarter-final match to Quadri 0-4 (9-11, 8-11, 9-11, 8-11) .

Sathiyan , on the other hand gave a tough fight to Walker before ending up on the losing side with a scoreline reading 0-4 (8-11, 8-11, 11-13, 15-17).

--IANS

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