Liam Pitchford’s singles match with Sourav Saha from India in the boys’ round of 32 is the sole remaining English fixture at the Volkswagen World Junior Championships in Manama, Bahrain.

Earlier today Pitchford’s boys’ doubles partnership with Sean Cullen was knocked out in the round of 16 after they lost to the tough Indian pair of Harmeet Desai and Soumyajit Ghosh 3-1.

After that Pitchford and his German mixed doubles partner, Petrissa Solja managed to reach the quarter-finals of the mixed doubles competition before they were finally knocked out by the Chinese pair of Gaoyuan Lin and Yuling Zhu.

It says a lot for the European pair’s achievement that the mixed doubles semi-finals were dominated by Chinese players with all four semi-final spots being taken up by Chinese pairings.

Now it’s left to see if Pitchford can equal that quarter-final place when he continues in the boys’ singles later today. He faces Saha in the round of 32 first with the winner playing either Emilien Vanrossomme (BEL) or Jiaji Wu (CHN) (at 7:50am GMT Saturday morning – if broadcast live yet TBC)

Pitchford’s match with Saha will be broadcast live on the itTV internet stream once again.

Results:

First round:

L Pitchford bt CM Hyuck (KOR) 4-1 (9-11, 11-6, 11-3, 11-6, 13-11)

S Gauzy (FRA) bt S Cullen 4-0 (11-7, 11-5, 11-5, 11-7)

Boys’ doubles:

S Cullen/L Pitchford bt A Di Salvo/N Galvano (ARG) 3-0 (11-9, 12-10, 11-6)

H Desai/S Ghosh (IND) bt S Cullen/L Pitchford 3-1 (10-12, 11-8, 11-5, 11-8)

Mixed doubles:

L Pitchford/P Solja (GER) bt L Mutti/D Vivarelli (ITA) 3-2 (11-3, 9-11, 7-11, 11-5, 11-9)

Y Zhu/G Lin (CHN) bt L Pitchford/P Solja (GER) 4-1 (11-3, 9-11, 11-6, 11-8, 11-3)

Fixtures:

Singles:

Liam Pitchford v Sourav Saha (IND)