Thursday , December 5 2024

The women's team defeated Spain 3-2 and the men's team defeated New Zealand 3-0

The Indian men's and women's teams reached the knockout stage of the World Table Tennis Team Championships with contrasting wins. The Indian women's team performed brilliantly after falling behind for a while and achieved a thrilling 3-2 victory over Spain. The men's team defeated New Zealand 3-0 without any problems. In the women's section, after Srija Akula and Manika Batra lost both their opening matches, Ayhika Mukherjee brought India back into the match with a win. Sreeja lost to Maria Jiao 9-11, 11-9, 11-13, 4-11 and Manika Sophia lost to Juan Zhang 13-11, 6-11, 8-11, 11-9, 11-7 . At this time Spain took a 2-0 lead. In the third singles match, Ayhika defeated Elvira Red 11-8, 11-13, 11-8, 11-4 and made the score 2-1. Manika defeated Maria 11-9, 11-2, 11-4 in the fourth singles to level the score at 2-2. Sreeja defeated Zhang Som 11-6, 11-13, 11-6, 11-3 in the decider to give India a 3-2 win. In Group-1, India finished second with three wins in four matches.

In the men's category, defending national champions Harmeet Desai and G Sathiyan had easy wins over Choi Timothy and Alfred Pena Dela respectively in the first two singles. Harmeet defeated Delan 11-5, 11-1, 11-6 and Sathiyan 11-3, 11-7, 11-6. Manush Shah made a comeback after two games down to defeat Maxwell Henderson 10-12, 6-11, 11-4, 11-8, 11-6. In Group-3, India was at third place after South Korea and Poland. India is among the 32 teams out of 40 that have qualified for the knockouts in both categories.