Paris Olympics 2024: Manika Batra To Play Britain’s Anna Hursey, Sharath Kamal Faces Deni Kozul In Table Tennis Openers
This is the first time India table tennis teams have qualified for the team events at Olympics.
Paris: Ace Indian paddler and Commonwealth Games gold medallist Manika Batra will take on Great Britain’s Anna Hursey interior the ladies folks’s singles opening spherical, even as veteran guys’s participant Achanta Sharath Kamal will clash with Deni Kozul of Slovenia on July 27, in conserving with the draws announced on Wednesday.
Manika, who's seeded 18th on the Games right here, had changed into the first girls’s desk tennis participant from India to make it to the spherical of 32 in singles on the Tokyo Olympics in 2021. In varied opening spherical matches, Harmeet Desai will take on Abo Yaman of Jordan in guys’s singles, even as 25-12 months-historic Sreeja Akula, seeded sixteenth, will open her promoting and marketing crusade in opposition to Swedish participant Christina Kallberg.
Commonwealth Games champion Sharath Kamal is spearheading a six-member Indian desk tennis contingent with the Forty one-12 months-historic all set to make his fifth appear to be on the Olympics. Manika, then as soon as added, will play at her 1/3 successive Games.
Gnanasekaran Sathiyan, a member of India’s gold medal-triumphing guys’s teams at equally the 2018 and 2022 Commonwealth Games in Gold Coast and Birmingham respectively, may would hope to now no longer make it to the idea squad and has been selected as a reserve participant.
Manika had not too lengthy ago touched a career-best ranking of world No. 24 following her tremendous run interior the Saudi Smash. Inside the ladies folks’s crew match, 11th-seeded India will open their promoting and marketing crusade in opposition to fourth seeds Romania. Aside from Manika and Sreeja, the 1/3 member interior the crew girls’s crew match is Archana Kamath. Ayhika Mukherjee is the reserve participant interior the category. The crew triumphing will straightaway enter the quarterfinals.
The Indian guys’s crew comprising Sharath Kamal, Manav Thakkar and national champion Harmeet, can have a trial by fire as they are going to face pinnacle-ranked China interior the opening spherical. The Paris Games will mark the first time that India will compete interior the crew match on the Olympics. The fellows’s and girls’s crew movements in desk tennis had been delivered at 2008 Beijing Games.
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