Wtt us smash

ITTF World Team Table Tennis: India's Manav Thakkar overcame France's Flavien Coton 3-2 in a hard-fought first-round clash, while Sathiyan Gnanasekaran failed to progress past the first round, even as top global stars progressed to the next round of the World Table Tennis (WTT) United States Smash.

Thakkar won the first game 12-10 but lost the second by same score, 10-12 before recovering to win the match 12-10, 10-12, 11-7, 7-11, 11-7 while Sathiyan saved a match point in the third game but could not take the match into the fourth game as he went down to Yuta Tanaka of Japan 3-0 (5-11, 7-11, 10-12) in a first round clash at the Ontario Convention Center on Sunday.

Among the other Indian players, Yashaswini Ghorpade will start her campaign against the third seed Yuling Zhu of Macao (China), while Manika Batra will take on Japanese wildcard Sakura Yokoi in another Round of 64 match.