Alex Borg and Brian Cini came from the brink as they fought back from two frames down to reach the quarter-finals of the World Team Championships in Sharm-el-Sheik, Egypt, yesterday.

Facing Indian pair Shivam Arora and Rahul Ajay Sachdev the Maltese looked set to be heading out of the competition when losing the opening two frames.

Arora outplayed Cini in the opener 86-24 before Sachdev held off some late resistance from Borg to win the second match 66-53 and put his team just one frame away from a place in the quarter-finals.

But Cini and Borg had other plans and they finally got on the scoreboard when winning the doubles match 72-38 to bridge the gap to 2-1.

Borg then saw off Arora 78-16 to send the tie into a decider.

Here, Cini kept his composure to ease past Sachdev 64-5 and complete a 3-2 win.

Earlier in the day, Borg and Cini had made serene progress to the Last 16 when they came from behind to beat Egypt pair Ahmed Ossama and Ashraf El Gharib 3-1.

Ossama gave the Egyptians an early lead when he beat Cini 76-15 but Borg soon restored equilibrium when he had the better of El Gharib 55-17.

The Maltese pair then won the doubles match 64-13 before Borg sealed victory when outscoring Ossama 90-22, compiling a break of 72 in the process.

Today, Borg and Cini will face Chen Zifan and Yuan Sijun, of China, for a place in the semi-finals on a busy day for the remaining teams in contention

The quarter-finals will be played in the morning session with the semi-finals pencilled early in the afternoon.

The tournament final will be played today at 3.30pm.

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:
Please select at least one mailing list.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.