Drinkhall's European dreams over in Stuttgart

PAUL Drinkhall's dreams of adding the European senior title to his youth crown are over after a nail-biting defeat in Stuttgart.

 BAT OUT OF HELL: Paul Drinkhall - European Youth Champion in 2008 - bows out of the senior championships in Stuttgart

The 19-year old strolled past Holland's Michel De Boer in round two but came unstuck later in the day against Russia's Fedor Kuzmin, eventually going down 4-3.

The English number one, who scooped the world junior silver medal in USA last December, bounced back from a error-strewn first game to take the next three and had a match point at 10-9 in the fifth game.

But the Russian showed iron nerves to bat away the danger and take the game 13-11.

Drinkhall fought hard to get himself ahead again in the sixth game but Kuzmin reeled off six consecutive points to take the game 11-8 before securing the win with an 11-9 final game.

Fellow England teenagers Darius Knight and Danny Reed also crashed out in Stuttgart in a day which didn't see a single British player progress to the fourth round.

Knight recovered from a disastrous start against Hungary's Daniel Zwickl to win three consecutive games and level the match at 3-3 but he couldn't carry his momentum into the decider and lost it 11-4.

Meanwhile Reed had no answer to Dutchman Trinko Keen's power and slipped to a straight games defeat.

Welsh pair Adam Robertson and Patrick Thomas were also in second round action but were on the wrong end of defeats to Germany's Christian Suess and Slovakia's Thomas Keinath respectively.

In the women's singles Kelly Sibley was no match for Austria's Liu Jia, losing in straight games to the number one seed, and Hannah Hicks was equally helpless against sixth seeded German Wu Jiaduo.

Naomi Owen provided some brief cheer for the British players, beating Slovenia's Vesna Rojko in round two but the Welsh number one came unstuck against Belarus' Veronika Pavlovich in her next match.

Joanna Parker was the final Brit in second round action but lost a tight match 4-2 to Austria's Qiangbing Li.