The Indian pair of Sharath Kamal and G Sathiyan entered the men’s doubles final on Friday at the 2020 ITTF World Tour Hungary Open defeating the top-seeded pair of Kwan Kit Ho and Chun Ting Wong of Hong Kong.
The Indian qualifiers had to dig deep to register 11–7, 12–10, 4–11, 4–11, 11–9 victory in a five-set match to book the summit encounter with second-seeded pair of Duda Benedikt and Franziska Patrick from Germany on Saturday.
The German pair advanced into the final with an 11-4, 11-5, 8-11, 11-3 victory over Polish-Belgian pair of Dyjas Jakub and Nuytinck Cedric.
Earlier in the men’s doubles, Sharath and Sathiyan had defeated the local favorites Nandor Eseski and Adam Judy 11-8 11-7 11-8 in the quarter-finals.
At the same time, Sharath, along with Manika Batra, settled for a bronze medal at the ITTF World Tour Hungary Open after they went down to mixed pair of Germany’s Patrick Franziska and Petrissa Solija.
The pair of Sharath and Manika had advanced into the semifinal of the mixed doubles and assured another medal for the Indian contingent. The India pair was handed a walkover after their opponents’ second-seeded Japanese pair of Jun Mizutani and Mima pulled out citing neck injury to Mizutani.
India’s number one player Gyanasekharan Sathiyan also defeated world number 61 player Naushad Alamian of Iran 4–0 to advance into the pre-quarterfinals.
Sathiyan is scheduled to lock horns with world number five Harimoto Tomokazu. Sathiyan is living the dream of his life as the country’s highest-ranked paddler Sathiyan Gnanasekaran on February 8 announced on Twitter that he has signed with the Japanese T-League side Okayama Rivets for the 2020-21 season. Sathiyan is considered to be the best for India to win medals at the Olympics too. Sathioyan had kicked off the year 20220 with a bang winning the German Cup (Bundesliga) table tennis championships in Germany with his club ASV Grunwettershasch.
Earlier, Commonwealth Games gold medalist Manika defeated world number 26 Chen Xu Yu 4-3. However, she lost 0–4 to world number 11 Hirano Miu in the pre-quarterfinals. Manika failed to go past Hirano as she lost in straight games of 9-11, 1-11, 7-11, 7-11.
