Bahrain: Harmeet Desai and Sourav Saha moved into the second round while Soumyajit Ghosh and G.Sathyan exited after losing their singles matches in the round of 64 at the Volkswagen World Junior Table Tennis Championships here on Thursday.

As for woman’s singles, all but the three Indian girls—Manika Batra, Mallika Bhandarkar and Reeth Tennison—bowed out in the first round while Ankita Das is slated to player her singles later tonight.

Desai, who struggled to start with, clawed his way back after losing the first two games to beat his Japanese opponent Asuka Sakai 4-3 (9-11, 5-11,11-6,11-7,11-8,8-11,10-12). It was a see-saw battle for Desai after the Japanese went ahead 3-2 taking the third, fourth and fifth games before the Indian pulled his socks to win the last two games.

For Saha, however, it was rather easy as he downed Argengine Pablo Saragovi 4-1 (12-10, 8-11, 11-4, 11-4, 11-4) to move into the round of 32.

Ghosh was the first to exit after losing to Florian Wagner of Germany in straight games of 10-12, 4-11, 6-11, 4-11 with the German proving too hot for Ghosh to handle as the score-line suggests. Sathiyan, however, put up a good fight before his Beligian opponent Julien Indeherberg subduing him for a 4-2 (11-6, 7-11, 11-7, 5-11, 11-5, 11-9) verdict.

Manika fought bravely against Japan’s Miyu Maeda and stretched the Japanese to lose 3-4 in a match that consumed nearly two hours. The Japanese won 10-12, 11-3, 11-6, 9-11, 11-8, 8-11, 12-10. But the other two girls lost tamely with Maria Xiao of Portugal beating Mallika 11-5, 6-11, 11-9, 20-18, 11-8 and Reeth losing to American Ariel Hsing 5-11,8-11,5-11,3-11.