New Delhi, Oct. 2: The Indian men’s team clinched a massive upset win in the ongoing World Team Table Tennis Championships on Sunday as they defeated Germany 3-1. The G Sathiyan-led India are currently joint-first in Group 2 along with France after two matches. They had won their first match 3-0 against Uzbekistan.

Sathiyan led from the front as he won both his matches against World No. 2 Germany.

Sathiyan defeated Benedikt Duda 3-2 (11-13,4-11,11-8,11-4,11-9) in the best of five games encounter before beating Dang Qiu 3-2 (10-12,7-11,11-8,11-8,11-9). He was trailing 0-2 at the start of both the matches but managed to bounce back to lead World No.17 India to a famous win.

“The match against Qiu was definitely much tougher. He is a top-10 player. It was a high quality match as well,” Sathiyan told.

Also, Manav Thakkar won 3-1 (13-11,6-11,11-8,12-10) against Walther Ricardo. Harmeet Desai lost 1-3 to Dang Qiu.

India’s next group match is against Kazakhstan on 3 October.

In the women’s draw, India recorded their first win of the group stage with a 3-0 result over Czech Republic.

The Manika Batra-led side had lost to Germany on Saturday.

Manika defeated Hana Matelova 3-1 (11-6, 11-6, 8-11, 12-10 ) in the first singles before Akula Sreeja and Diya Chitale won their singles against Marketa Sevcikova and Katerina Tomanovska, 3-0 and 3-1 respectively.

It was a close affair between Diya and Katerina before the Indian prevailed 11-13, 15-13, 12-10, 14-12. Down two game points in the fourth game, Diya relied on her serve to make it 10-10 before winning a spectacular rally.

Katerina made it 12-12 before India got the couple of points she needed to complete a fine win.-Agencies