Indian men’s and women’s teams reach knockout stage of World Table Tennis Championship
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The Indian men’s and women’s teams sealed their place in the knockout stage of the World Table Tennis (WTET) Team Championship with contrasting wins in the group stage on Tuesday. The Indian women’s team came back from behind and recorded a thrilling 3-2 win over Spain, while the men’s team easily defeated New Zealand 3-0. The Indian team, which was strong on paper, faced a tough competition from Spain.
After Shreeja Akula and Manika Batra lost both their opening matches, Ayhika Mukherjee brought India back into the competition with a win. After this, Sreeja and Manika were successful in winning the fourth and fifth matches. Sreeja lost to Maria Jiao 9-11, 11-9, 11-13, 4-11 in the opening singles. Sophia-Juan Zhang took Spain’s score to 2-0 with a 13-11,6-11,8-11,11-9,11-7 win over India’s top-ranked player Manika. 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 brought success to India by registering a 11-6, 11-13, 11-6, 11-3 win over Zhang in the deciding match. The Indian women’s team finished second in Group One with three wins from four matches. China remained at the top position in this group. India’s only defeat in the group stage was against China. Against China, Ayhika and Sreeja had defeated world number one and number two players Sun Yinghsa and Wang Yidi respectively.
In the men’s category, defending national champions Harmeet Desai and G Sathiyan registered easy wins in the first two singles against Choi Timothy and Alfred Pena Dela respectively. While Harmeet won 11-5, 11-1, 11-6, Sathiyan defeated Dela 11-3, 11-7, 11-6. After this, Manush Shah, after trailing by two games, won over Maxwell Henderson 10-12, 6-11, 11-4, 11-8, 11-6.
With this, India finished third in Group Three after South Korea and Poland. Out of 40 teams in this competition, India is among the 32 teams that have made it to the knockouts in both the categories. The teams that reach the quarter-finals of the competition will qualify for the Paris Olympics. For Olympic tickets, the Indian men’s and women’s teams will have to register two consecutive wins.
Disclaimer: IndiaTheNews has not edited this news. This news has been published from PTI-language feed.
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