(by Steve Hopkins, photo USATT)
Nikhil Kumar logged wins over England’s top two players (Liam Pitchford and Paul Drinkhall), and Jishan Liang added a win over Drinkhall to give TeamUSA their first win at the ITTF World Team Championships in Busan. Kumar (World No. 379) took out World No. 25) Pitchford 3-1 to give the US an early lead. Liang (World No. 149) then gave TeamUSA a 2-0 lead with his 3-1 win over Drinkhall (World No. 101). England fought back with Tom Jarvis defeating Sid Naresh 3-1 and Pitchford defeating Liang 3-0 before Kumar outlasted Drinkhall for a 3-2 set win – and a 3-2 TeamUSA win. TeamUSA still has Kazakhstan and Saudi Arabia later in the week to finish up their group.
Most of the top seeds in the Men’s event are still undefeated. China, Germany, Korea, France, Sweden, Japan, Portugal, Slovenia have each maneuvered past the lower seeds – but each still has their toughest match ahead of them.
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The top seeds are all holding their own in the Women’s event as well, though there was some real excitement on the first day for China. India won the first match when the faced off against China. That victory, Ayhika Mukherjee over Sun Yingsha was a monumental step for India and would have been news in itself (a loss by World No. 1 to World No. 155). However, two matches later, when World No. 49 Sreeja Akula upset World No. 2 Wang Yidi things got really interesting. India was up 2-1 in a first-to-3 match with two more chances to log the biggest upset in decades – but China found their footing and Sun Yingsha and Wang Manyu closed the door with 3-1 and 3-0 victories (giving China a narrow 3-2 win in their first match).
The Women have been much more tightly contested matches thus far. England fell to Kazakhstan 2-3, Ukraine needed every match for their 3-2 win over Croatia, France only topped the Czech Republic 3-2, Italy upset Puerto Rico 3-2, TeamUSA fell to Chile 2-3, and Sweden barely topped Singapore 3-2. The top seeds seem to be pushing forward, but things will get tighter later this week as those top seeds will face the second seeds in their groups. The “local” teams are having a tough run right now, with TeamUSA 0-2, Puerto Rico 0-1, and Canada 0-2.
Group action continues early this week – and elimination rounds will proceed through to next weekend.
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