The Indian men's team failed to repeat their magic of the Melbourne Commonwealth Games and went down 2-3 to Singapore in the first division league match of the World Table Tennis Championships in Bremen, Germany, on Wednesday.
India launched its campaign with Achantha Sharath Kamal asserting his supremacy over Xiao Li Cai, winning 11-4, 11-13, 13-15, 9-11.
Subhajit Saha also gave a superb show of his skills while thrashing Tien Hoe Clarence 11-2, 11-7, 11-4, after Soumyadeep Roy lost the second match, to give India a 2-1 lead.
But an in-form Zi Yang, who warmed up by thwarting Roy's challenge 11-9, 11-8, 11-2, avenged his recent Commonwealth Games' defeat against Sharath in the reverse match, winning 11-7, 8-11, 11-8, 11-6.
Roy offered feeble resistance before suffering his second loss of the day against Cai, 5-11, 14-12, 7-11, 8-11.
India had upset Singapore at the recent Commonwealth Games to win their maiden gold medal in the men's team event.
In the women event, India suffered their third successive defeat in the championship division, losing 0-3 to Siberia.
India are now languishing with three points from three defeats and are almost out of the reckoning for the quarter-final stage as they run into defending champions China and Belarus in their last two matches.
National champion Mouma Das lost to Silvija 8-11, 11-7, 7-11, 6-11 to hand Siberia, seeded 18th in the championships, a 1-0 lead.
The seasoned Poulomi Ghatak failed to repeat her performance of the previous round against the Czech Republic and went down tamely to Gordana Plavsic in straight games. Ghatak lost 9-11, 2-11, 5-11.
Ana-Maria Erdelji completed the triumph by beating Kasturi Chakravarthy 11-7, 11-4, 11-8.
The Indian women are playing in the championship division after a gap of 25 years, having cleared the qualifiers at Doha.
They will have to compete in the play-off matches if they fail to emerge among the top three in their group to avoid relegation from the top division.
