Bahrain: The Chinese supremacy in world table tennis came to the fore when they beat India 3-0 in the semifinals of the Volkswagen World Junior Table Tennis Championships here on Tuesday.

But before they went down to China, the Indian paddlers who claimed their first bronze in team championships, gave some anxious moments as all the three Indians—Soumyajit Ghosh, Harmeet Desai and G. Sathyan—managed to take a game of their Chinese opponents.

That, in a nutshell, displayed their growing confidence of how they are not afraid of the best in business. Peter Karlsson, at whose academy the boys train regularly, put it very aptly in a messae he sent to TTFI: “The bronze winning performance and their confident approach against China proves that India’s future in the game is bright. Congratulations to the boys.”

Coming back to the semifinals, Gaoyuan Lin defeated Ghosh 11-2, 6-11, 11-8, 9-11, 11-6 despite some resistance coming from India’s No. 1 player. Desai, too, won his second game but Hongyuan Song was too good for the Indian to last as the Chinese won 11-5,  9-11,  6-11,  11-5,  11-6. And in the third rubber Jiai Wu accounted for G Sathyan  11-13,  11-6,  8-11,  11-3,  11-8 in spite of a good fight put up by the latter.

Coach Kamlesh Mehta admitted that his boys were a little overawed by the occasion. “They fought well against the Chinese and that is what matters. This would have given them a nice feel and they can carry the confidence in individual events,” he said.

TTFI general-secretary Dhanraj Choudhary credited the boys’ bronze medal winning performance to the “excellent junior programmes” and the help provided by both the Sports Ministry and SAI. “The boys were picked early before the 2010 CWG and trained properly and it has yielded good results,” he said.

Meanwhile, the Chinese entered both the boys and girls finals and they will take on Japan in title clashes.