The Indian pairing of Sharath Kamal and Sathiyan Gnanasekaran upset top-seeds Kwan Kit Ho and Chun Ting Wong of Hong Kong to enter the men’s doubles final of the ITTF World Tour Hungary Open here on Friday.
In a hard-fought five-setter, the Indian qualifiers won 11-7, 12-10, 4-11, 4-11, 11-9 and earned a meeting with the second-seeded pair of Duda Benedikt and Franziska Patrick from Germany in the final to be held on Saturday.
The Germans defeated Poland’s Dyjas Jakub and Belgium’s Nuytinck Cedric 11-4, 11-5, 8-11, 11-3.
On Thursday, Sharath and Sathiyan had beaten home favourites Nandor Ecseki and Adam Szudi in the quarter-finals, after having sent the Japanese pair of Shunsuke Togami and Yukia Uda packing in the previous round.
As for Sharath and Manika, they got a walkover in the quarter-finals from the second-seeded Japanese pair of Jun Mizutani and Mima Ito after Mizutani pulled out because of a neck injury he suffered during his singles event.
Manika failed to go past Japanese Miu Hirano in the pre-quarter finals, losing in straight games of 9-11, 1-11, 7-11, 7-11. Manika, who beat Szu-Yu Chen of Taipei 4-3 in a tough round of 32 match, was down 0-3 before scoring a strong comeback win, including the crucial fourth game on extended points.
Sathiyan is still in the fray and is also slated to meet top-seed Harimoto Tomokazu and Manika will meet Japanese Miu Hirano in the round of 16 later on Friday. In the round of 32, the Indian defeated Noshad Alamiyan of Iran 4-1.