Bahrain: Ankita Das continued making waves in the ongoing Volkswagen World Junior Table Tennis Championships when she beat the higher-ranked Chinese Taipei girl, Hsien-Tzu Cheng, 8-11, 15-13, 10-12, 11-8, 11-7, 11-4 in the pre-quarter-finals here. Ankita is slated to meet No. 10 Chinese Ruochen Gu in the quarterfinals, to be played later this evening.

Ranked 35, Ankita who made it to the main draw through qualification, had caused a major upset on Friday when she downed third-seed Romanian Bernadette Szocs 4-3 (11-6, 11-9, 2-11, 7-11, 7-11, 11-8, 13-11) to make a strong  impression at the world meet.

Continuing from where she left off on Friday, the Indian didn’t have a good start but came back dramatically in the second game to win 15-13. She was down by four points at one time in the game but resurrected herself. In the third again, she lost narrowly but since picked up her momentum nicely to put it across her Taipei opponent, who is ranked 28.

Taking of her win, coach Bhawani Mukherjee said Ankita has improved by leaps and bound as she proved it to the world that she was not the one to give it up easily. “She did it yesterday against her Romanian rival and today against the Taipei girl. I think the second game was important and once she won that 15-13, her confidence level rose. She never let her grip on the match go,” said Mukherjee.

Recalling her match against Bernadette Szocs, Mukherjee said how she came back down 2-7 in the crucial seventh game on Friday to win 13-11 to move into the round of 16.

But unfortunately for the rest of the Indians at the world meet, it was curtains. Sourav Saha, Soumyajit Ghosh and Harmeet Desai could not progress beyond the round of 16 in their singles while the remains Indian girls could not go beyond the round of 32.

Other results: Liam Pitchford (Eng) bt Sourav Saha 11-6,11-6,11-5,8-11,9-11,11-5, Chia-Sheng Lee (Tpe) bt Soumyajit Ghosh 11-3,11-4,11-8,6-11,11-2, Cedric Nuytinck (Bel) bt Harmeet Desai 8-11,11-9,11-4,11-7,11-7.