Houston, Nov 27 Indian women’s doubles pair and mixed team trail blazed their way to quarterfinals of 2021 World Table Tennis Championships Finals here. While, another mixed duo of Sharath Kamal and Archana Kamath bowed out in round-16.
The mixed pair of Sathiyan Ganansekaran and Manika Batra registered a hard fought victory over Indian-origin Kanak Jha and her Chinese partner Manyu Wang of USA after coming back from losing two games.
The Indians had a disappointing start with losing two games in a row by 15-17 and 10-12, but they fought back well and snatched the third game by 12-10.
The Americans then could manage to get past the Indians and surrendered the match by 2-3 after losing fourth and fifth game by 6-11, 7-11, respectively.
Manika and Sathiyan became the first Indian mixed pair to reach quarter-finals of Table Tennis World championships since 1952.
The legendary mixed team of Ranbir Bhandari and Sayeed Sultana played the quarter finals of the flagship event in Bombay in 1952; also this was the first time India hosted the mega event.
Earlier in the tournament, star paddler Manika along with Archana Kamath continued their winning run and sailed into quarterfinals after registering 3-1 (11-4, 11-9, 6-11, 11-7) victory over Hungarian pair Georgina Pota and Dora Madarasz in the women’s doubles round-16.
This will be the second occasion, when Manika will feature in world championship women’s doubles quarterfinal. In 2017, Manika had made it to the final eight partnering with Mouma Das.
However, another mixed pair of veteran Indian paddler Sharath Kamal and young Archana went down to French pair Jia Nan Yuan-Emmanuel Lebesson in last 16 clash by 0-3 (4-11, 8-11, 5-11), and crashed out of the tournament.
Eyeing to seal the spot in final four, Sathiyan and Manika ranked 26th, will be up against 20th ranked Japanese duo of Tomokazu Harimot and Hina Hayata.
On the other hand, women’s duo of Manika and Archana will lock horns with Sarah de Nutte and Xia Lian Ni of Luxembourg.
