Asian Games | India win their first ever Table Tennis medal at Asian showpiece

08/28/2018

Indian Men's Table Tennis team has clinched a historic victory by winning a bronze medal at the Asian Games 2018 in Jakarta and Palembang. The Indian team lost to second seeds Korea in the semi-finals of the men’s Table Tennis team event to win the first medal at the Asian level.

Before this, India did not have a single medal in the sport which was introduced in the Games program in 1958 with the likes of China (61 gold), Japan (20) and South Korea (10) swept the medals for pretty long time.

However, after reaching the semi-finals, the men’s team were assured of India’s first ever medal in the sport at the Asiad. And as India lost to second seeds Korea in the semi-finals, they finished with a historic bronze medal at the 18th Asian Games. This is the first Table Tennis medal for India at the Asian Games.

In the semi-final, the much-fancied Korean team proved to be too good for India’s Sathiyan Gnanasekaran, Achanta Sharath Kamal and Anthony Amalraj, who put up a good fight before going down 0-3. Sathiyan started well, taking the first game against Sangsu Lee. He was put under pressure in the second part of the first game but showed some lovely deception in his shots to take the lead and give India a rousing start.

From there, the world No.6 started taking control and gave Korea the 1-0 lead. Sharath was then up against world No. 26 Young Sik Jeoung and he fought back from 0-2 down to take the game to the decider but lost in five games. India fielded the experienced Amalraj in the third match instead of Harmeet Desai but he went down in four games to Woojin Jang.

Scores of the matches in the semi-final tie:

Lee vs Sathiyan: 9-11, 11-9, 11-3, 11-3

Sharath vs Jeoung: 9-11, 9-11, 11-6, 11-7, 8-11

Amalraj vs Jang: 5-11, 7-11, 11-4, 7-11