Sharath, Harmeet enter next round, U-21 champ stuns world number 8

India's table tennis star Achanta Sharath Kamal began his ITTF World Tour India Open campaign in style, romping to a 4-1 victory over Can Akkuzu of France in his opening round here at Thyagaraj Stadium on Thursday.

Another Indian Harmeet Desai also won his opening round against World no. 77 Tristan Flore, albeit in a different manner.

Sharath unleashed an impressive range of shots to down Akkuzu in the Round of 16. The World No. 59 endured a hiccup in the third game after winning the first three rather consummately 11-5, 11-8, 11- 4. But he asserted his dominance in the fifth again to ensure there were no more anxious moments.

Harmeet, on the other hand, started off confidently against the French. He attacked, both, with his backhand and forehand and wrapped up the first three games (11-4, 11-6, 11-9) in under 20 minutes. He seemed to be on his way to the next round at 8-7 in the fourth but he let it slip away from him.

As he eased the pressure, the Frenchman defended adroitly and attacked Harmeet's backhand to win the next three games (11-9, 11-9, 11-7) and restore parity. Harmeet looked a little anxious as the deciding game unfolded. He slipped to 5-6 to face the prospect of a bitter defeat after being in such a dominant position. But then, he reeled off the next 6 points to seal his place in the next round.

In a shocker, World No. 8 Vladimir Samsonov of Belarus became the first big seed to crash out of the tournament, dramatically losing to the new Under-21 men's champion Asuka Sakai of Japan in straight games. Amazingly, Asuka has not even made the cut into the world rankings yet.

It was a heartbreaking day for Indian women, however, even though two of them managed to sneak into the next round. The country's main hopes, World No. 91 Manika Batra and newly crowned national champion Madhurika Patkar, tumbled out of the tournament almost without a fight.

Manika, of course, lost to her country woman Mousumi Paul 7-11, 11-8, 7-11, 4-11, 8-11 but Madhurika suffered an agonising defeat against Hong Kong's Wai Yam Soo, capitulating 11-9, 6-11, 2-11, 4-11, 9-11.

Joining Mousumi in the pre-quarters was Suthirtha Mukherjee who got the better of another Indian player Anikta Das 11-5, 11-8, 11-8, 11-9.

The biggest heartbreak was suffered by young Krittwika Roy. She was inches away from registering the biggest victory of her career against the fifth seeded Huajun Jiang of Hong Kong. After taking her to the decider, she enjoyed as many five match points but couldn't capitalise on any of them.

The day began on a disappointing note for India as both the teams of Harmeet Desai-Soumyajit Ghosh and Ronit Bhanja-Arjun Ghosh lost their respective men's doubles Rounf of 16 match.

Desai-Ghosh began the game on a high clinch the first set with style after opening a healthy lead of 10-7 in the latter half of the game and allowed the Hong Kong opponents Tianyi Jiang and Sui Hang Lam to salvage just one point before taking the set 11-8.

The Hong Kong pair came back strongly in the second set and applied their flair nicely to win the set 11-8.

Both the teams matched each other with every shot, every game and while the Indian pair took the third

set 11-4, the paddlers from Hong Kong picked up the fourth game 11-3.

As the game turned to the decider final set, the game remained extremely tight and both the teams looked to play on loop with patience in order to force the other to make a mistake. Though the Hong Kong pair opened a lead of 9-7, India came right back in the game to take the game till 11-11 only to let slip two points at the end and Jiang-Lam won the set 13-11 and hence, the game.

Ronit Bhanja and Arjun Ghosh's inexperience was visible as they were unable to post any real threat to Germany's Benedikt Duda and Steffen Mengel and lost the game 1-3 (8-11, 4-11, 11-9, 6-11).