Indian men, women advance to knock-out stage of World TT Championship. table tennis news

The Indian men’s and women’s teams recorded contrasting wins in their final group games to advance to the knock-out stage of the Word Table Tennis Team Championship on Tuesday. While the Indian women’s team registered a thrilling 3-2 win over Spain, the men’s team defeated New Zealand 3-0. The Indian women’s team, the stronger side on paper, was pushed against the wall but found a way past the Spaniards after Sreeja Akula and Manika Batra lost the first two singles. After Ayhika Mukherjee kept India in the competition with a win in the third singles, Manika and Sreeja bounced back to finish the job in the fourth and fifth singles.

Sreeja lost to Maria Jiao 9-11, 11-9, 11-13, 4-11 in the opening singles. Sophia-Xuan Zhang defeated India’s top-ranked player Manika 13-11, 6-11, 8-11, 11-9, 11-7 to take Spain’s score to 2-0.

Ayhika kept India in the contest by defeating Elvira Red 11-8, 11-13, 11-8, 9-11, 11-4 in the third singles.

After this, Manika defeated Maria 11-9, 11-2, 11-4 in the fourth singles to make the score 2-2. Sreeja secured the parity by winning over Sofia-Xuan by 11-6, 11-13, 11-6, 11-3.

Indian women finished second behind China in Group 1 with three wins from four games. Their only defeat, albeit by a narrow margin, came against the powerful Chinese, when Ayihika and Sreeja defeated world numbers one and two, Sun Yinghsa and Wang Yidi, respectively.

In the men’s competition, defending national champions Harmeet Desai and G Sathiyan recorded easy wins against Choi Timothy and Alfred Pena dela respectively in the first two singles.

While Harmeet won 11-5, 11-1, 11-6, Sathiyan defeated Dela 11-3, 11-7, 11-6.

Manush Shah then came from two games down to win 10-12, 6-11, 11-4, 11-8, 11-6 over Maxwell Henderson, taking India to third place in Group 3 behind South Korea and Poland. Stayed in place.

Of the 40 teams participating in the competition, both the Indian men and women were among the 24 teams to qualify for the knock-out stage. Reaching the quarter-finals of the event will ensure India a place in the team event of the Paris Olympics.

India will have to win their Round of 32 and then Round of 16 matches to reach the last-eight round and qualify for the Olympics.