Table tennis: India spoil the qualifying party

The winning starts of the New Zealand men's and women's table tennis teams were halted by India.

It did not stop the Kiwis advancing to the quarter-finals, but their respective losses to the Indians meant they faced a tougher draw for the knockout phase.

The third-seeded New Zealand women lost 3-2 to fourth seeds India in a tense final group encounter.

After wins over Northern Ireland (3-1) and Wales (3-2), the New Zealanders could not get over the line against India, with two close losses for Karen Li proving decisive.

Older sister Li Chunli continued her unbeaten Games run with straight-set wins over Mouma Das 11-8, 11-3, 11-6 and Poulomi Ghatak 11-3, 11-4, 11-2.

Tracey McLauchlan had her third straight tournament loss, to Nagapattinam Indu, 11-13, 9-1, 15-11.

Karen Li's two losses were nearly identical, lasting 37 and 38 minutes. On both occasions she found herself two games down, fought back to level at 2-2 but lost the final game.

She went down 10-12, 8-11, 11-8, 11-8, 6-11 to Ghatak and, in the decisive fifth match, 6-11, 8-11, 11-8, 12-10, 5-11 to Das.

While New Zealand would have advanced regardless of the result, manager Ron Garrett said a win would have been far preferable.

"It just meant we were going to face one of the top teams straight off, whereas we would have struck a weaker team if we had won.

"It was very tight right to the end. It could have gone our way if Karen had had a bit more luck on her side, but the Indian girls played well so I can't take that away from them."

Garrett said Chunli's form bode well for the singles competition this week.

Chunli is ranked fourth.

The sixth-seeded New Zealand men lost 3-1 to India, the No 4 seeds, after not dropping a rubber in their three earlier matches - including a 3-0 sweep over Mauritius.

Aaron Li got New Zealand off to a lead against India with a five-set win over Soyadeep Roy.

But experienced campaigner Peter Jackson lost over four sets to Indian No 1 Chetan Panduranga Baboor and Andrew Hubbard also went down in four to Raman Subramanian.

Li came back on to try to rescue the match, but lost in a knife-edge five-setter to Baboor, who took the last set 11-9.

- NZPA

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