Indian paddler Sharath Kamal took a game off the legendary Ma Long, the reigning Olympic and world champion, before making a third round exit from the table tennis competition at the Tokyo Games on Tuesday.
Sharath fought tooth and nail to take the second game from Long but eventually lost 7-11 11-8 11-13 4-11 4-11 in 46 minutes.
With the defeat, India's challenge has ended in table tennis at the Games. Manika Batra, Sutirtha Mukherjee and G Sathiyan have all exited the singles competition.
After losing a close first game, Sharath took a 7-3 lead in the second with some perfectly placed forehands, and he was also helped by some errors by Long.
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The Chinese legend soon reduced the margin by taking five straight points, inducing backhand errors from the Indian.
A crushing forehand winner after a short rally gave Sharath a chance to close the second game in his favour and he sealed that with a slap shot.
Sharath responded extremely well to the balls hit close to his body to lead 4-2 in the third game but Long took four consecutive point to snatch the lead.
A backhand error from Sharath at 8-8 gave Long the advantage but the Indian did not let him close out the game easily. Long took a time out while leading 12-11 and came back to seal the third game and take a 2-1 lead.
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A flurry of errors from Sharath and some better hitting from Long put the Indian behind 0-6, a lead from where a comeback was not easy against a player of Long's calibre.
From an intense contest, it suddenly became a drab one-sided affair with Sharath struggling to keep pace with Long.
