Indian boys win bronze in world junior TT

Bahrain: The Chinese may have asserted their supremacy with a 3-0 drubbing in the semifinal, but that could not prevent the Indian paddlers from winning the bronze medals in the World Junior Table Tennis Championships on Tuesday.

Before going down to their fancied rivals, Soumyajit Ghosh, Harmeet Desai and G Sathyan gave the Chinese some anxious moments, with each managing a game. Gaoyuan Lin defeated Ghosh 11-2 6-11 11-8 9-11 11-6 after stiff resistance from India`s No. 1 player. Desai, too, won his second game but Hongyuan Song was too good for the Indian to last as the Chinese won 11-5 9-11 6-11 11-5 11-6. And in the third rubber, Jiai Wu accounted for G Sathyan 11-13 11-6 8-11 11-3 11-8. Coach Kamlesh Mehta admitted that his boys were a little overawed by the occasion, especially after the win over Korea. "They fought well against the Chinese and that is what matters. This would have given them a nice feel and they can carry the confidence in individual events," he said. TTFI general-secretary Dhanraj Choudhary credited the boys` bronze-medal performance to the "excellent junior programmes" and the help provided by both the Sports Ministry and SAI. "The boys were picked early before the 2010 CWG and trained properly and it has yielded good results," he said. Meanwhile, the Chinese entered both the boys and girls finals, and they will take on Japan in the title clashes. Peter Karlsson, at whose academy the Indian boys train regularly, in a message sent to the Table Tennis Federation of India, said, "The bronze winning performance and their confident approach against China proves that India`s future in the game is bright. Congratulations to the boys." PTI