Indian paddler Sharath Kamal took a sport 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 right here on Tuesday. Sharath fought tooth and nail to take the second sport 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 Sathiyan have all exited the singles competitors.
After dropping a detailed fist sport, 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 lowered 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 sport in his favour and he sealed that with a slap shot.
Sharath responded extraordinarily nicely to the balls hit near his physique to guide 4-2 within the third sport however Long took 4 consecutive level to grab the lead.
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 trip whereas main 12-11 and got here again to seal the third sport 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 all of the sudden grew to become a colorless one-sided affair with Sharath struggling to maintain tempo with Long.
