Indian women came up with a creditable 3-2 victory over Greece, while their male counterparts went down 2-3 to Turkey in the second stage of the World Team Table Tennis Championships in Guangzhou, China, on Thursday.

The women paddlers, who finished third in the first stage, were up 2-0 in no time with Neha Agarwal and Poulomi Ghatak drubbing Maria Mirou and Ekaterina Ntoulaki 11-8, 11-4, 11-8 and 11-6, 2-11, 11-4, 11-7 respectively.

An off-colour Mouma failed to clinch the issue by losing 8-11, 8-11, 11-13 to Christina Fili and Poulomi losing to Maria 3-11, 5-11, 13-11, 10-12. It was left to Neha to thrash Ekaterina Ntoulaki 11-4, 11-7, 11-3 to make it 3-2 and set up India against Serbia in the second division competition of the championship.

Valiant fightback

Meanwhile, Indian men fought back valiantly from two game down but failed to see through their team by losing the deciding second division rubber.

Subhajit Saha promised a lot by coming back from one game down, but was virtually outplayed by his opponent Irfan Tavukcuoglu in the last two games to lose 9-11, 11-4, 3-11, 4-11.

Achanta Sharath Kamal then lost a close match 11-8, 6-11, 8-11, 12-10, 7-11 to Jiang Pengfei to concede 0-2 lead.

Soumyadeep Roy then sparked off a fightback with an 11-5, 11-6, 11-8 thrashing of Gencay Menge before Sharath Kamal did the same to drub Irfan Tavukcuoglu 12-10, 11-5, 11-4.

Subhajit, however, turned out to be the weak link for the Indians as he lost 4-11, 9-11, 12-10, 7-11 in the decider to dash his side’s hopes.

India, who finished second in the first stage behind leaders Egypt, play Nigeria on Friday for the 33rd-36th place.