birmingham harmeet desai raised his game in the decisive singles as the indian mens table tennis team retained its commonwealth games gold medal after a close fight against singapore on tuesdayworld no 121 harmeet outsmarted 133rdranked zhe yu clarence chew 118 115 116 in the third singles to ensure indias third mens team gold medal in cwg historythe gold was indias seventh since the sports introduction in manchester 2002india were expected to beat singapore but clarence accounted for veteran sharath kamal in the first singles to level the match 11harmeet and sathiyan had little difficulty in getting past yong izaak que and ye en koen pang in the opening doublessathiyan had given india a 21 lead with a 1210 711 117 114 victory over lowerranked pang he overcame a fourpoint deficit to win the first game and that gave him a lot of confidencehowever the stand out performer was indias third player harmeetsharath had struggled to contain clarence but harmeet went on the offensive against the lefthander and ensured that he did not get room to go for his powerful forehand winnersharmeets backhand was also on fire as he won the majority of the long rallies his service variation also troubled the singaporeanin the first singles sharath went down 711 1412 311 911 against clarence whenever the indian placed the ball deep on clarences forehand the return was a winnertwo net chords helped sharath in the second game but clarence comfortably won the next twoindia had beaten a stronger opponent in nigeria on monday with sharath stunning world number 15 aruna quadri but his loss against a much lower ranked opponent on tuesday showed rankings did not matter much in a multi sporting eventindia had won the team gold for the first time in melbourne in 2006 before repeating the feat in gold coast four years ago it was also sharaths 10th medal in the games history and he is set to add more with singles and doubles events to followwhile 40yearold sharath stole the show against nigeria harmeet rose to the occasion against singaporethe difference was in harmeets serves my serves he clarence was receiving really well i never felt comfortable in the whole match but harmeet was fantastic with his serves the way he attacked the whole flow was perfect said sharathsingapore who are not the force they once were when gao ning was around played with no fear after a surprise win over england on mondayboth the left handers went all out as if they had nothing to lose they were firing rockets we didnt know how to handle that exactly said sharathwhat also worked for harmeet in the final match was staying calm even when clarence was attackingsharath bhai was a bit passive i was focussing on changing my serves all the time serving some times on the back hand and short on the forehand and also long serves sharath bhai didnt serve long which i observedconsidering the occasion surely one the biggest wins of my