Indian paddlers Manush Shah and Diya Chitale won the bronze medal in the mixed doubles table tennis event after losing 0-4 to two-time defending champions Sun Yingsha and Wang Chuqin in the semifinals at the Nagoya City Mizuho Park Athletic Stadium on Friday.
The Indian pair entered the semifinals after a 3-1 quarterfinal victory over four-time world medallists and World No. 4 Wong Chun Ting and Doo Hoi Kem. However, they were unable to reproduce that performance against the formidable Chinese pair.
Up against Olympic champions and two-time Asian Games gold medallists Wang and Sun, popularly known as ‘Sha-Tou’, Manush and Diya put up a fight in the opening game but lost 8-11.
The Chinese pair dominated the second game, winning 11-5, and raced to a 5-0 lead in the third. The Indians fought back and put pressure on their opponents but eventually lost the game 8-11.
Sun and Wang then closed out the semifinal with an 11-2 win in the fourth game to seal a 4-0 victory.
Manush and Diya became the second Indian mixed doubles pair to win an Asian Games medal after Sharath Kamal and Manika Batra.
Earlier, the men’s doubles pair of Harmeet Desai and Sathiyan Gnanasekaran lost 0-3 to Japan’s Sora Matsushima and Shunsuke Togami in the third round.
In women’s doubles, Yashaswini Ghorpade and Diya Chitale went down 0-3 to China’s Shuhan Fan and Yi Chen in the third round. Sreeja Akula and Syndrela Das also lost their third-round match 0-3 to China’s Man Kuai and Wang Manyu.
Manav Thakkar was beaten 2-4 by North Korea’s Ryong Tae in the men’s singles second round, while Manush Shah and Manav lost 1-3 to Japan’s Tomokazu Harimoto and Hiroto Shinozuka in the men’s doubles second round.
Meanwhile, Yashaswini advanced after defeating Syria’s Hend Zaza 4-1 in the women’s singles second round.
(IANS inputs)
