Close defeat for hosts

Palolic Club of Bangladesh were defeated by HUAWEI Club of Nepal on the opening day of the Advocate Golam Mostafa Memorial South Asian Club Table Tennis Championship at the MA Aziz Stadium in Chittagong yesterday.

Yesterday's loss was a close one though as Nepal edged by 3-2 sets. Bangladesh's Egyptian player, El-Sayed Lashin won both his matches while Manash Chowdhury and Mahbub Billah lost all of their fixtures.

Though the last set between Manash and Purushottam Bhattacharya was hard fought and even reached a deuce, Manash was outdone by his Nepalese counterpart.

However, Bangladesh's coach Mohammad Ali was not one to lose hope as he feels it was a very close fight and that if Manash scored a point earlier, the team could have won on aggregate.

And although the current South Asian champions, Bengal Team of India won all three of their matches against Thimphu Club of Bhutan, Ali expressed no concern over facing the Indian side today.

“Lashin is a very promising player in our team. He defeated all the Indian players in the last South Asian league. So, we can hope India will have to give a pretty good fight,” said Ali.

In the other match of the day, Southern Sri Lankan TT Club beat SRC of Maldives in 3-1 sets.