India's women's doubles pair of Manika Batra and Mouma Das clinched the silver medal while seasoned pair of Achanta Sharath Kamal and G. Sathiyan entered the summit clash in the table tennis competition at the 21st Commonwealth Games here on Friday.
Moreover, it was a bad day for the men's doubles combine of Harmeet Desai and Sanil Shetty. In the singles, Harmeet and Sathiyan Gnanasekaran, and in mixed doubles, Sanil and Madhurika lost the quarter-final matches on the ninth day.
In the women's doubles gold medal match, Manika and Mouma went down 0-3 (5-11, 4-11, 5-11) to Feng Tianwei and Yu Mengyu of Singapore in the gold medal clash. Unforced errors and some aggressive game from Singapore kept India on the back foot throughout the match.
In the first men's doubles semi-final, Sharath and Sathiyan made a stunning comeback after losing the first game and went on to thrash their Singapore opponents Yew En Koen Pang and Shao Feng Ethan Poh 3-1 (7-11, 11-5, 11-1, 11-3).
They will now face Paul Drinkhall and Liam Pitchford from England in the gold medal match on Saturday.
It could have been an all-Indian affair in the final but Harmeet and Sanil were shown the door by Drinkhall and Pitchford in the other semi-final. The English pair outclassed the Indians 3-0 (11-7, 13-11, 13-11).
Harmeet and Sanil will now be up against Singapore's Pang and Poh in the bronze medal match on Saturday.
Sharath also stormed into the singles semi-finals even as Harmeet and Sathiyan lost their respective quarter-finals.
Sharath beat England's Liam Pitchford 4-2 (9-11, 13-11, 10-12, 11-9, 11-7, 11-9) to advance to the last four while Harmeet lost 0-4 (9-11, 8-11, 9-11, 8-11) to Nigerian Quadri Aruna, and Sathiyan lost 0-4 (8-11, 8-11, 11-13, 15-17) to England's Samuel Walker.
In the semi-finals on Saturday, Sharath will be up against Nigerian Quadri Aruna.
In the mixed category, Sharath and Mouma and Sathiyan and Manika reached the semi-finals.
However, the other Indian pair of Sanil Shetty and Madhurika Patkar crashed out after suffering a narrow 2-3 loss in their quarter-final tie.
The veteran duo of Sharath and Mouma had a rather comfortable outing in fending off Canada's Zhen Wang and Mo Zhang, with a 3-1 (11-9, 11-9, 5-11, 11-5) verdict.
Sharath and Mouma will now be up against Singapore's Ning Gao and Mengyu Yu in the semi-final on Saturday.
In another quarter-final, Sathiyan and Manika outclassed their Singaporean opponents Xue Jie Pang and Yihan Zhou 3-0 (11-6, 12-10, 14-12) in straight games to reach the last four.
Sathiyan and Manika will face Pitchford and Tin-Tin Ho here on Saturday.
--IANS
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