Opening Defeat for Bahrain Paddlers

TDT | Manama

Email: mail@newsofbahrain.com

Bahrain began their campaign in the men’s team table tennis competition at the 20th Asian Games with a 3-0 defeat to Chinese Taipei at Sky Hall Toyota in Japan yesterday.

Rashid Sanad provided the strongest resistance in the opening match against Hsu Hsien-chia. After dropping the first game 11-6, he pushed his opponent closer in the second before going down 11-9 and 11-4 to lose in straight games.

Lin Yun-ju then doubled Chinese Taipei’s advantage with an 11-3, 11-4, 11-1 victory over Mohammed Alaali.

Sayed Mahfoodh needed to win the third contest to keep Bahrain in the tie and briefly established a three-point lead against Kuo Guan-hong. However, the Taiwanese recovered to prevail 11-5, 11-7, 11-6 and complete the sweep in 54 minutes.

The result secured top spot in Group C for Chinese Taipei, who had earlier defeated Nepal by the same overall score.

Attention now turns to Bahrain’s meeting with the Nepalese at the same venue today, beginning at 6.30am on Table Nine.

Both teams enter their final group match seeking a first victory, with the winner securing second place and advancing to the round of 16.

The round of 16 will be played tomorrow at 6.30am, followed by the quarter-finals at 1.20pm.

The semi-finals are scheduled for Wednesday at 11am, while the gold-medal contest will take place at the same time on Thursday.

All times are in Bahrain time.