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Tag: Table Tennis

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Exclusive – ‘I want to win a medal this time’: Manika Batra on her Paris Olympics aspirations | – Times of India

NEW DELHI: Indian table tennis teams, both men’s and women’s, recently scripted history by booking their tickets to this year’s Paris Olympics. It will be the first time India will compete in the table tennis team events at the Olympics. Earlier, both the Indian teams failed to secure direct qualifications to the Paris Games, after losing their respective pre-quarterfinals matches at the World Table Tennis Championships in Busan, South Korea. The prestigious tournament offered Olympic quotas to the quarter-finalists.It could have been ‘so close, yet so far away’ for the Indian teams, but they finally made the cut through their world rankings. The Indian women’s team qualified through their latest rankings of 13, while the men’s team makes it as 15th ranked team. After the historic quali...
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Indian men’s, women’s TT teams script history, qualify for Paris Olympics | More sports News – Times of India

NEW DELHI: The Indian men's and women's TT teams on Monday made history by securing their first-ever qualification for the Olympics based on world rankings.Following the conclusion of the World Team Championships Finals held in Busan last month, which marked the final qualifying opportunity for the Paris Olympics, seven spots in the team events were yet to be filled.The spots were allocated to teams according to their rankings."The highest-ranked teams not yet qualified in the latest World Team Ranking booked their ticket to Paris 2024," ITTF said.In the women's event, India, ranked 13, Poland (12), Sweden (15), and Thailand have secured their passage to Paris.While Croatia (12), India (15), and Slovenia (11) have secured their spots in the men's team event."Finally!!!! India qualifies ...
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India table tennis teams make history, qualify for Paris Olympics

Despite losing their pre-quarterfinal matches at the ITTF World Table Tennis Team Championships in Busan on Wednesday, both the Indian men’s and women’s teams will qualify for the Olympics for the first time ever by taking the last world ranking spotIt’s the first time that India will qualify for the team event of an Olympics since the event was included at the Beijing 2008 Games. While the official list of team rankings will come out on March 4, as per calculations, both teams have made the cut for Paris. “The men’s and the women’s teams played very well and we’re proud of them. We’re waiting for the official announcement that we have qualified for the Paris Olympics, which will come on the 5th of March,” Kamlesh Mehta, Table Tennis Federation of India general secretary, said. The men’...
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World TT Championships: Ayhika Mukherjee drags India back from the brink again against Spain

The Indian women’s team stood firm and launched a spirited comeback after going two matches down to beat Spain 3-2 in their final group-stage clash of the World Team Table Tennis Championships in Busan on Tuesday.With the narrow win, India finished second in their group with three wins from four matches, and made it to the knockouts, but they have been handed a challenging draw that could thwart their quest to qualify for the Olympics as a team. India have to reach the quarterfinal of this tournament to earn a direct qualification for the Paris Games. In the Round of 32, they face a strong Italy team who finished third in their group. They may go into that game as favourites, but the winner of the tie will meet a very strong Chinese Taipei side in the pre-quarterfinal. Sreeja Akula tak...
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Paris Olympics: Indian men’s table tennis team faces uphill battle after poor show by Sharath Kamal, team selection conundrum

Hopes of the Indian men’s table tennis side making it to the Paris Olympics suffered a serious setback with the second consecutive loss at the ongoing team World Championships in Busan.While their 3-0 loss to hosts Korea on Monday was understandable given the gulf in class between the two teams, it was their unexpected loss to Poland on Sunday that has made their quest to qualify for the Olympics even more challenging. To earn a direct entry to the Games, India have to make it to the quarterfinals of this tournament, failing which they will have to depend on the performance of other teams and the permutations and combinations that go with it. After adjusting to the weather in Busan where the current temperature can fall as low as 8 degrees Celsius at night, India beat Chile in their ope...
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Table Tennis World Team C’ships: Ayhika Mukherjee stuns world No 1 Sun Yingsha, Sreeja Akula beats No 2 Wang Yidi

On Friday morning in Busan, Ayhika Mukherjee and Sreeja Akula produced something that not many would have seen coming. Incredible doesn’t quite begin to describe it as the Indian paddlers beat the top two players in the world – No 1 Sun Yingsha and No 2 Wang Yidi – in their respective singles matches at at the ITTF World Team Table Tennis Championships Finals 2024 in a Group 1 fixture between India and China. Ultimately, the powerhouses would come through as Manika Batra lost matches No 2 and 4, while Ayhika couldn’t quite pull off another upset against Wang Manyu, world No 4 in the decider. But, the overall result notwithstanding, the two upsets marked a monumental morning for the sport. “What an unbelievable morning,” tweeted Olympian Neha Aggarwal Sharma when India led the tie 2-1. “...
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More and more Indian table tennis players are using long pimple rubbers. But does it guarantee success?

After she returned empty-handed from the Birmingham Commonwealth Games three years ago, a distraught Manika Batra returned to the drawing board. Old associations were rekindled. And old ways were rejigged.India’s top women’s table tennis player called on her old friend Aman Balgu, who runs an academy in Hyderabad. Not a fan of the pimpled rubber Manika used, Balgu kept an open mind and saw the benefits of it. But to make it work, he made a subtle, yet profound, tweak. “Manika came to me when she was already a well-established player. She was taught and ingrained in her that the pimpled rubber is a defensive rubber, and the only way she can attack is to twiddle and smash,” Balgu tells The Indian Express. “My idea was very simple, why use the backhand to just defend or just control the pa...
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Meet Hugo Calderano, the Brazilian vegetarian table tennis star who speaks seven languages and can solve a Rubik’s Cube in nine seconds

He speaks seven languages, can solve a Rubik’s Cube in nine seconds on average, and can name the capital of every country.Brazilian 27-year-old Hugo Calderano may be a mental wizard now but at the age of 13, he had to make a potentially life-altering decision. With his parents being physical education teachers, he was into various sports but excelled at two – volleyball and table tennis. They backed him to become a professional athlete, but asked him to pick one sport and focus on it. Being Brazilian, they perhaps thought he would pick volleyball, the country’s second-most popular sport after football. After all, he had participated in regular competitions and was even drafted into the state team while on the other hand, there weren’t too many top Brazilian star paddlers he could look u...
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Teenage paddler with Indian roots, Prithika Pavade eyes an encore at Paris Olympics

She’s French, has Indian roots and at the Paris Olympics, six months away, she’ll be ranked higher than any other female table tennis player from the country of her birth and ancestry.No wonder, then, that 19-year-old Prithika Pavade is making heads turn in both the countries. Prithika’s father, who was born and raised in Puducherry, migrated to Paris after getting married. Prithika was born in the French capital and this summer, will get a r are opportunity to compete in an Olympics at home. On Friday, she gave a glimpse into what she’s capable of. Currently ranked 33rd in the world and number one in France, Prithika fought back after being two games and a match point down in the third to beat South Korea’s Ryu Hanna 9-11, 9-11, 10-12, 7-11, 3-11 and set up a Round of 16 clash with ano...
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Sathiyan focusing on mixed doubles with Manika Batra in Olympics lead-up as singles too tough

A WTT Star Contender held in India is where star paddler G Sathiyan would normally want to give his all and take advantage of home comforts to reach the tournament’s later rounds and improve his world ranking.Since 2019, he’s been driven to maintain his place among the top 50 in the world, with entering the top 20 his ultimate target. On Wednesday at the WTT Star Contender Goa at the Peddem Indoor Stadium in Mapusa though, there was a shock in store for him. He’s used to being in the main draw of singles events, but low ranking meant he had to go through qualifying after not getting a wildcard. He won his first round of qualifiers, but then suffered a shock 3-2 (7-11, 11-7, 6-11, 11-7, 8-11) loss to World No.194 Vincent Picard in a topsy-turvy match. Normally, he would be distraught aft...
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Don’t allow her to wear shorts… people passed snide remarks: Table tennis star Sutirtha Mukherjee

Sutirtha Mukherjee and Ayhika Mukherjee’s table tennis bronze was the first for India in women’s doubles at the Asian Games. But Ayhika’s injury at the start of the year could have jeopardised their immediate future as a pair. Ayhika experienced ‘unbearable’ back pain in January during a national ranking tournament in January. She was worried that her career was on the line.“The first thing that came to my mind was that my career was over. I’ve seen table tennis players being forced to retire due to lower back injuries. I thought the same would happen to me and there was no way I was going to bounce back from this,” Ayhika said. Ayhika’s competitors, who are more like friends, rushed to comfort her. The news reached Sutirtha, her playing partner. At the time, the pair had started to pla...
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How intimidating is it to play Fan Zhendong, the Virat Kohli of table tennis, in China?

Hangzhou: He tries not to show it, but as he lifts the paddle to serve, Jang Woojin’s hands quiver.It’s the semifinals of the Asian Games. And the match has gone off the script. The South Korean has made the ‘mistake’ of taking a game off Fan Zhendong. The Chinese world number 1 and two-time world champion doesn’t look like he needs outside help. But the crowd has made this personal. They worship Zhendong here. And that’s putting it mildly. A Chinese journalist tells a story that recently was a trending topic for days. Zhendong was staying at a hotel in Beijing. When he stepped out, a fan connived with the hotel staff, snuck into his room and stole his underwear. This other time, the Zhendong diehards took over an airport in southern China’s Guangdong province before he could board a fl...
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Mihir Vasavda at Asian Games: How the strategy change in last game left India’s Ayhika and Sutirtha Mukherjee with a bittersweet bronze

The Mukherjees weren’t sure whether to be happy or sad.Ayhika managed a smile. Sutirtha was fighting back tears. Ayhika was feeling ‘surreal’. Sutirtha felt ‘it could have been better’. They lost a thriller. But won a bronze. They were conflicted and confused. The kind of state they’d left their North Korean opponents in minutes before. At 7-3 in Game 6, Cha Suyong took a step back from the table and scratched her head. The North Koreans had been away for nearly three years before they suddenly emerged at the Asian Games. And Suyong looked perplexed, probably wondering if, during their years of self-imposed exile, the sport that’s all about the blurry, hypnotising rallies and mad scrambling had transformed into a slow-burning game of attrition, where chops and blocks were more decisive ...
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Asian Games 2023,Day 9 Live Updates: Mukherjees in action in table tennis semifinal, Parul and Priti look to replicate Sable’s golden feat

Mihir Vasavda at Asian Games: In India’s first medal in women’s skeet, daughters of a fisherman, dry-cleaner & a royal From left, silver medalists India's Rajeshwari Kumari, Manisha Keer and Preeti Rajak celebrate on the podium during the awards ceremony for the Shooting Trap Team Women competitions of the 19th Asian Games in Hangzhou, Sunday, Oct. 1, 2023. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan) THE TRAP shooting podium on Sunday demonstrated sports’ unique ability of being a great leveler. At the centre was the daughter of a humble fisherman who developed the patience and synchronization to shoot down flying targets by living a piscatory life. To her right was the daughter of the scion of Patiala royal family. And on the left was the daughter of a dry-cleaner from Itarsi in Madhya Pradesh who is ...
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Asian Games: Indian men’s TT team loses 0-3 to South Korea in quarterfinals | Asian Games 2023 News – Times of India

NEW DELHI: The Indian men's table tennis team missed out on a bronze medal opportunity as they were defeated 3-0 by a second-string South Korean team in the quarterfinals of the Asian Games in Hangzhou on Sunday.The series of losses began with Harmeet Desai losing the first match 0-3 to An Jaehyun. Despite G Sathiyan's efforts to put up a fight, he couldn't overcome Park Ganghyeon, leading to India trailing 0-2 after the first two ties.The hopes of a comeback rested on Achantha Sharath Kamal, but unfortunately, he went down 2-3 to Oh Junsung. What made the defeat even more disappointing was that South Korea's top three players didn't even participate in the match.Earlier in the day, Sharath Kamal played a crucial role in helping India escape a potential upset against Kazakhstan. The mat...
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Mihir Vasavda at Asian Games: Sports where Chinese dominance will be challenged

More than 12,000 athletes from 45 nations will display the cliched Olympic tenets of faster, higher and stronger across the 481 medal events when the Hangzhou Asian Games begin in earnest from Sunday. But when the Games close on October 8, China will top the medals tally, as it has in each of the last 10 editions since the 1982 Delhi Asian Games. The host nation has a 886-athlete strong contingent in the fray. This includes 36 Olympic champions and 630 Asian Games debutants, who will compete in 407 out of the 481 medal events and fight for the 74 Olympic qualification berths across multiple disciplines. India’s ambitious target is an overall tally of 100 medals. For China, nothing less than 150 gold medals will be considered a success. While it will be smooth sailing for China in most...
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Asian Games: Indian table tennis teams off to winning starts – Times of India

NEW DELHI: The Indian table tennis teams started their journey in the Asian Games competition on Friday with the men's team achieving victory in both of their preliminary round matches. Meanwhile, the women's team displayed their strength by defeating a formidable Singapore side at the GSP Gymnasium.During the morning session, the Indian men's team dominated Yemen with a flawless 3-0 victory in their opening match. Later in the evening session, they once again took to the table and secured a 3-1 win over Singapore in the preliminary round of Group F.On the other hand, the women's team faced a tough battle against Singapore and emerged victorious with a score of 3-2. Seasoned players Manika Batra and Ayhika Mukherjee contributed with one win and one loss each, while Sreeja Akula's victor...
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India can be among top five nations in table tennis, feels G Sathiyan | More sports News – Times of India

PUNE: Star player G Sathiyan feels India has the potential to be among the top five table tennis nations and the rapid growth of the game can be fuelled further with an elusive medal at the Summer Olympics next year.Sathiyan said India's young players have the potential to do even better than he and his contemporaries have managed to achieve.“In the team rankings, right now we are closing in on the top 10, but the way we are playing as a unit, we can be a top five nation in table tennis,” Sathiyan told PTI in an exclusive interview on the sidelines of the Ultimate Table Tennis here.“I see a lot of players who can break into the top 50, we have to have more Indians coming into the top 50 and going closer to that Olympic medal. This Paris Olympics will be a great chance to qualify as a te...
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Indian heavyweights take centrestage as Ultimate Table Tennis League returns sans top international stars

Week in and week out, India’s top paddlers G Sathiyan and Manika Batra team up in high-stakes matches, representing the country as they chase prestigious titles and ranking points.On Wednesday, though, at a banquet hall in Pune, the duo smiled at each other, shared the podium at a media conference and then parted ways, knowing that for the next 21 days, they won’t be teammates, but rivals.After a gap of over three years, the Ultimate Table Tennis (UTT) League begins here on Thursday with six teams competing for the big prize. Despite the high of multiple Commonwealth Games — the latest one in 2022 where Indian paddlers won seven medals, including four gold — the sport hasn’t managed to grab eyeballs in the country. A World Table Tennis (WTT) Star Contender was held in Goa in March this ...
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UTT will give us quality match practice ahead of Asian Games, says Sharath Kamal | More sports News – Times of India

Seasoned Indian table tennis player Sharath Kamal on Wednesday expressed his belief that the fourth edition of the Ultimate Table Tennis (UTT) would provide valuable match practice for players leading up to the Hangzhou Asian Games in September.The UTT, a league format tournament, is set to commence in Pune on Thursday after a four-year hiatus.The season opener will feature a match between the previous champions, Chennai Lions, and Puneri Paltan. The return of the UTT offers a platform for table tennis players to compete and fine-tune their skills in preparation for the upcoming Asian Games.Sharath's comments highlight the significance of the tournament in terms of providing competitive exposure and practice opportunities for the players.With high-level matches and tough competition exp...