Chennai: Rising Indian paddler Archana Kamath proved her mettle once again as she clinched the silver medal in the U-21 women’s singles category of the ITTF Challenge Plus, Oman Open.
While Archana dazzled in her category to bag a medal, World No. 28 G. Sathiyan fought hard to only lose out in the semi-final stage of the Men’s singles bracket while Manav Thakkar also faltered at the last four stage of the U-21 Men’s singles category.
Archana didn’t have the best of the starts in the penultimate round as she lost the opening two games 6-11, 5-11 but showed great tenacity to win the next three 11-2, 11-6, 11-9 against World No. 12 Mariia Tailakova of Russia.
In the finals, up against the World No. 4 Satsuki Odo of Japan, she tried her best but could not match her opponent’s prowess and went down 0-3 to settle for the silver.
In the men’s singles category, As fate would have it, Sathiyan was drawn up against Amalraj and the former couldn’t get off to a winning start but bounced back to win the next games and beat
his compatriot 4-1 to book a berth in the quarters.
However, Sharath couldn’t replicate his compatriot’s heroics as he went down to Tomislav Pucar of Croatia in the round of 16.
Sathiyan then got past World no.36 Emmanuel Lebesson of France to set up a semis clash with World No. 15 Mattias Falck of Sweden. Sathiyan dug deep into his reservoir and stretched the Sweden to the limits but eventually had to bow out without a medal after a hard fought 3-4 defeat.
The U-21 Men’s singles, In the last four clash, World No. 30 Artur Abusev of Russia, ranked lower than Manav Thakkar started off with two tough wins (11-7, 11-8) before Manav pulled one back in his favour. However, the Russian wasn’t going to let this opportunity slip as he took it away from Manav with a clinical 11-5 win.