India table tennis pair Sharath Kamal Achanta and Sathiyan Gnanasekaran won bronze at the Belgium Open on Friday. They lost in the semi-finals to the second-seeds Patrick Franziska and Ricardo Walther of Germany 3-2 to settle for a bronze.
Sharath Kamal and Sathiyan lost the first game 7-11 but came back strongly, to win the next two games 11-7, 11-5. However, they couldn’t maintain the momentum and lost the next two 5-11, 5-11.
India’s Sanil Shetty too had a good run in the tournament, beating higher ranked players and going all the way to the quarter-finals.
He beat seventh-seeded Cedric Nuytinck of Belgium 4-3 (11-8, 7-11, 12-10, 11-5, 2-11, 5-11, 11-9) and ninth-seeded Cheng-Ting Liao of Taipei 4-0 (8-11, 11-9, 12-10, 11-7, 11-7). Both Cedric and Cheng-Ting are ranked World No. 70 and 72 respectively. Shetty is ranked 180 in the world.
He couldn’t, however, unravel Germany’s Ricardo Walther and missed out on a medal opportunity. He lost 1-4 (7-11, 3-11, 11-5, 7-11, 6-11).
The country’s women’s doubles pair of Manika Batra and Mouma Das also made in to the quarters.
They overcame the Taipei pair of Yu-Wen Huang and Yu-Jhun Li 3-2 (11-5, 9-11, 11-9, 10-12, 11-4) but went down to another Taipei pair, Hsien-Tzu Cheng and Hsing-Yin Liu 1-3 (6-11, 11-5, 9-11, 10-12) in a closely fought encounter.
