Table Tennis: Sharath Kamal, Manika Batra win Asian qualifiers, book Tokyo berthOlympics dream
The upcoming Tokyo Games will see four Indian paddlers -- Achanta Sharath Kamal, Sathiyan Gnanasekaran, Manika Batra and Sutirtha Mukherjee--- leading a strong challenge.
While the quartet feature in respective singles categories, the pair of Sharath and Manika will also represent the country in mixed-doubles, which will be played for the first time at the Olympics, aiming to end the country's wait for an elusive medal in the sport at the Olympics., which started in 1988 at Seoul.
Sensational Sharath
A 6-feet 2-inch lanky paddler from Tamil Nadu announced his arrival at the international circuit in the early 2000s and soon the world witnessed glimpses of the skills acquired by India's then ‘legend in the making'.
Now, India's current top-ranked paddler Sharath, who has a record nine senior national titles to his name, has been preparing with gusto to produce a memorable show in his fourth Olympics at the Tokyo Games.
UTT - TTFI tie up
Table Tennis Federation of India's (TTFI) strong domestic initiatives received a further boost as Vita Dani and Niraj Bajaj founded Ultimate Table Tennis (UTT) in 2017.
UTT heralded a new era for the sport, boosting its eco-system with a well-connected bottom-up approach that links the grassroots to the existing TTFI initiatives, while introducing a world-class annual league tournament.
Manika magic
The 2018 Commonwealth Games in which India bagged a rich haul, heralded the arrival of Manika Batra.
With a victory against Yu Mengyu from Singapore, Batra became the first Indian woman paddler to clinch the gold medal at CWG.
History in Jakarta
Fresh from the heroics at Gold Coast CWG, a few months later Indian TT saw one more glittering chapter being added at the 2018 Asian Games in Jakarta, Indonesia.
This time a team comprising Achanta Sharath Kamal, G Sathiyan and Anthony Amalraj gave the country its first-ever TT medal at the second biggest sporting event in the world after the Olympics.