Kazakh table tennis players Kirill Gerasimenko and Alan Kurmangaliev got off to a winning start in the men's doubles at the 20th Summer Asian Games in Japan, infohub.kz reports.
In their second-round match, the Kazakh pair faced Iran's Benyamin Faraji and Aryan Gaffari. Gerasimenko and Kurmangaliev won 3:1.
The Kazakhs took the first game 11:8, after which their opponents leveled the match at 7:11. The next two games went to Gerasimenko and Kurmangaliev, 11:9 and 11:4. The match lasted 27 minutes.
The Kazakh duo thus advanced to the next round of the men's doubles tournament and will continue their bid for Asian Games medals.
Gerasimenko and Kurmangaliev had earlier played for Kazakhstan's men's team in the team event. The national team successfully cleared the group stage, beating Bangladesh (3:0), Singapore (3:1) and Laos (3:1).
Another Kazakh pair, Aidos Kenzhigulov and Sanzhar Zhubanov, lost to an Iranian duo and failed to reach the next round.
The 20th Summer Asian Games are being held in the Japanese cities of Aichi and Nagoya and will end on October 4.