Mouma, Shamini, Ankita enter 3rd round in Asian TT

 

 Busan: National champion K Shamini, veteran Mouma Das and Olympian Ankita Das entered the third round from their respective quarters in the women's singles event at the Asian Table Tennis Championships here on Friday. However, it was curtains for Delhi girl Neha Aggarwal and Maharashtra's Madhurika Patkar.
On a day which saw three women paddlers making progress, two were standout performances and the most talked about being the one between Mouma Das and Singapore's Isabelle Siun Li whom the Indian beat 4-3 in 75 minutes, the longest so far in the championships.
Mouma eventually overcame the Singaporean in a contest that went the full distance with the minimal two-point margin sealing the issue in seventh game. Mouma won 11-6, 11-5, 13-11, 7-11, 17-19, 9-11, 11-9. Mouma will take on Japanese Ishikawa Kasumi in the next round.

Representative image of the game of Table Tennis. (Reuters)

For Akita, it was equally a tough ask against Vietnamese Mai Hoang My Trang who stretched the Indian almost the full distance before Ankita clinched the match 4-2 (6-11, 11-9, 11-9, 11-6, 8-11, 11-9) in her favour.
As for Shamini, she had the best of outings as she completed her second-round demolition of Iranian Omrani Mahjobeh in less than half an hour with a 4-0 rout. Shamini won 11-8, 11-5, 11-6, 11-6. Shamini will play Chinese Ding Ning in the next round.
But Neha lost her first-round match to Korean Cho Hala 1-4 (8-11, 9-11, 11-9, 4-11, 4-11) while Madhurika Patkar exited in the second round losing to Chinese Liu Shiwen 5-11, 9-11, 3-11, 4-11. Earlier she had beaten Taipei's Huang Hsin 4-2 (11-4, 9-11, 7-11, 11-5, 11-4, 11-6).
In men's doubles, the pair of Soumyajit Ghosh and Harmeet Desai lost to Ma Long and Xu Xin 2-3 in the second round, while the other Indian duo of Sharath Kamal and Sanil Shetty entered the third round after they got a walkover from the Iranian pair of Teharkhani Hamidreza and Mohammad Akhlaghpasand.