Indian paddler Sharath Kamal took a recreation off the legendary Ma Long, the reigning Olympic and world champion, earlier than making a 3rd spherical exit from the desk tennis competitors on the Tokyo Games on Tuesday (July 27). Sharath fought tooth and nail to take the second recreation from Long however ultimately misplaced 7-11, 11-8, 11-13, 4-11, 4-11 in 46 minutes. With the defeat, India’s problem has led to desk tennis on the Games. Manika Batra, Sutirtha Mukherjee and G Stahiyan have all exited the singles competitors.
After dropping a detailed first recreation, Sharath took a 7-3 lead within the second with some completely positioned forehands, and he was additionally helped by some errors by Long. The Chinese legend quickly decreased the margin by taking 5 straight factors, inducing backhand errors from the Indian.
A crushing forehand winner after a brief rally gave Sharath an opportunity to shut the second recreation in his favour and he sealed that with a slap shot. Sharath responded extraordinarily nicely to the balls hit shut to his physique to lead 4-2 within the third recreation however Long took 4 consecutive level to snatch the lead.
The veteran Sharath Kamal goes down to China’s Ma Long in his third spherical match. This was Sharath’s 4th Olympics participation. With this, the #TableTennis marketing campaign for India comes to an finish in #Tokyo2020
We witnessed some actually vibrant outcomes from TT at this video games.#Cheer4India
— SAIMedia (@Media_SAI) July 27, 2021
A backhand error from Sharath at 8-8 gave Long the benefit however the Indian didn’t let him shut out the sport simply. Long took a day out whereas main 12-11 and got here again to seal the third recreation and take a 2-1 lead.
A flurry of errors from Sharath and a few higher hitting from Long put the Indian behind 0-6, a lead from the place a comeback was not simple in opposition to a participant of Long’s calibre. From an intense contest, it immediately turned a colorless one-sided affair with Sharath struggling to maintain tempo with Long.
(with PTI inputs)
