World TT Championships: India Finish Campaign Without Any Medal

Houston: India’s campaign at the 2021 World Table Tennis Championships Finals ended without any medal after the women’s and mixed doubles teams lost in the quarter-finals, here. In mixed doubles, Tokyo Olympians Manika Batra and Sathiyan Gnanasekaran lost 1-3 (5-11, 2-11, 11-7, 9-11) to Japan’s Hina Hayata and Tomokazu Harimoto and crashed out in the quarter-finals on Saturday.

They had earlier beaten China’s Wang Manyu and US’s Kanak Jha and the Puerto Rican team of Adriana Diaz and Brian Afanador en route to the quarters. Meanwhile, Manika and her women’s doubles partner Archana Kamath also bowed out of their event after suffering a disappointing 0-3 loss (1-11, 6-11, 8-11) against Sarah de Nuette and Xia Lian Ni of Luxembourg in the final eight.

Batra and Kamath made it to the quarters with wins over Belgium’s Margo Degraef and Nathalie Marchetti and Hungary’s Dora Madarasz and Georgina Pota in the earlier rounds. With losing semi-finalists getting bronze medals at the World Table Tennis Championships, both the Indian teams in action on Saturday were just one win away from confirming a podium finish at the event.

Notably, India have won only two medals at the world table tennis championships, both at the inaugural edition in 1926.

“End of a dream run here in Houston which was certainly one of my best ever world championships so far,” tweeted G Sathiyan, who was the most successful Indian singles player at the event, reaching the round of 32 in the men’s event.

“Though it was disheartening not to make it after coming agonisingly close to a historic medal and also for missing out closely to break into top-16 in singles for the first time, nevertheless was certainly a terrific tournament and lots to learn from,” he added.