All Indian TT stars at Chile Pro Tour advance

Harmeet Desai and Soumyajit Ghosh

All the 10 Indian players (five men and five women) at the Santiago tourney made it to the pre-quarterfinals! This is definitely a record in Indian Table Tennis history.

Of course, there will be those who complain that the tourney does not feature big stars, but it does augur well for Indian Table Tennis, especially since there are quite a few youngsters in the draw.
In fact, there is some good news and some bad news on this front. Harmeet Desai and Soumyajit Ghosh meet in the round of 16, but one of them will reach the quarter finals of a Pro Tour event in their teenage years, which is a huge boost for their confidence.
None of the Indian women players meet each other.

Pre quarterfinalists:
Women: Mamta Prabhu, Manika Batra, Madhurika Patkar, K Shamini, and Ankita Das
Men: Sourav Chakraborty, Soumyadeep Roy, Harmeet Desai, Soumyajit Ghosh, and Sanil Shetty

Sharath advances to the Quarterfinals

India's A Sharath Kamal beat Lee Sang Su of the host country in a thrilling match (4-3) to advance to the Quarter finals of the year ending Pro Tour Grand Finals tournament.

In a cliff-hanger of a match which went down to the wire, Sharath beat Lee Sang 11-13,11-9,5-11,11-9,11-9,8-11,15-13. Sharath now plays 2004 Olympic Champion, Ryu Seung Min.


The sensation of the day was the loss of the No. 2 seed Ovtcharov Dimitrij who lost to his countryman Bastian Steger in the first round.