Indian men and women were the first to book their semifinal slots after winning their Super Eights group matches in the 21st Commonwealth Table Tennis Championships at the Jawaharlal Nehru Indoor Stadium here on Thursday.
In spite of the fact that the Indian men have the custom to finish – they play their final match against Wales in group F – the women's completed their commitment in group F with unequivocal triumphs over Wales (3-0), Malaysia (3-0) and Nigeria (3-0).
Prior, the men's group defeated Sri Lanka and Malaysia with an indistinguishable 3-0 edge to seal their compartment in the semi-final. Anthony Amalraj, who got the chance to play his matches on Thursday, had it fairly simple against Sri Lankan Krishan Wickramaratha, tidying him up with a 3-0 decision in the opener however he was observed to battle a bit against Malaysian Feng Chee Leong. In any case, the Indian defeated the underlying hiccups to beat him 3-1.
With respect to the rest of the matches, they were as straightforward as they can get as G. Sathiyan and Manav Thakkar shaped part of the squad against Sri Lanka while Sharath Kamal and Harmeet Desai were pitted against Malaysia.
Mentors Australian Brett Clarke and Soumyadeep Roy gave adequate chances to every one of the players before the knockouts on Friday.
Archana Kamath was the common factor in all the three women's matches while the two mentors pivoted different players, including Manika Batra, Madhurika Patkar, Sutirtha Mukherjee, and Ayhika Mukherjee. Every one of the players turned out decisively against their particular rivals.
Other than India, England people too made the semi-final grade after scoring up two successes each. Their men beat Singapore 3-2 while they asserted a 3-1 triumph over Australia. Their women then again, beat Australia 3-1 and after that trounced Sri Lanka 3-0.
With two semifinal slots left in each of the two sections, the teams that look to book their berths are Singapore and Nigeria, barring a problem or two in the last match.
In individual occasions, just one of the two Indians, G. Sathiyan and Manav Thakkar, would advance to the medal round as they were attracted a similar quarter while the other three Indians were fortunate to end up uniformly conveyed into different quarterfinals.
All the Indian male players were among the best eight seeds (in light of their ITTF July rankings) while just three women's – Manika Batra, Archana Kamath, and Madhurika Patkar – were seeded and got first-round byes in the main draw. The remaining two – Sutirtha and Ayhika – should make it to the fundamental draw through qualifiers.
