India's performance at the Olympics - Table tennis

India's table tennis team faced a challenging campaign at the Paris Olympics, with mixed results across events. In the women's team quarterfinals, India pushed Germany to four games, but ultimately fell short. Archana Kamath's win over Shan Xiaona was a highlight, but the team couldn't quite overcome the German squad.

In women's singles, Manika Batra and Sreeja Akula put up strong fights but were ousted by Japan's Miu Hirano and China's Sun Yingsha, respectively. Sharath Achanta and Harmeet Desai faced tough opponents in the men's singles, losing to Slovenia's Deni Kozul and France's Félix Lebrun.

The men's team, meanwhile, struggled against China, losing 3-0 in the last 16 round. Despite the disappointing results, India's table tennis players showed glimpses of their potential and will look to build on this experience for future tournaments.

Table Tennis India aims for medals at the 2024 Paris Olympics

Indian players are laser-focused on the Paris Olympics 2024, where 60 countries are participating in the Table Tennis sport. This time, they will not go to the athletes village to enjoy and meet famous sports stars. Their goal is to bag nothing less than medals.

This is probably the first Olympics when this aim is realistic. We have the experienced Sharath Kamal again along with India's star player, Manika Batra. But this time, we also have Sreeja Akula who has improved by leaps and bounds in the past few years and is now ranked in the elite groups.

India's team medal prospects provide some hope as the teams have players of good strength and experience.

Massimo Costantini is also sensing the ambitious mood of the Indian Table tennis team. A unique fact this time is that there are a few personal coaches, which indicates that the sport has become highly professional and lucrative at the top level.

India Table Tennis team composition:

Men’s team: Sharath Kamal, Harmeet Desai, and Manav Thakkar; 

Reserve player: G. Sathiyan

Men’s singles: Sharath Kamal and Harmeet Desai

Women’s team: Manika Batra, Sreeja Akula, and Archana Kamath; 

Reserve player: Ayhika Mukherjee

Women’s singles: Manika Batra and Sreeja Akula

Harmeet Desai and Sutirtha Mukherjee are National Champions!

Harmeet and Sutirtha won the National Table tennis Championships titles yesterday. While the strong Sutirtha beat Kritwikka in straight sets in the finals, Harmeet overcame teammate Manav Thakkar in a close encounter.

Super stars Sharath Kamal and G Sathiyan were upset by Soumyajit Ghosh and Harmeet respectively.

Photo: Kesavan for The Hindu

Upsets at the South Zone National Ranking Table tennis tournament at Dharwad

Birdie Boro beat World top 100 player Harmeet Desai 4-2 (-5, 3, 5, 9, -9, 7) at the South Zone Indian National Ranking tournament at Dharwad. Several juniors are challenging our established seniors, which is a very good sign. Other examples are Siddhesh beating Raj Mondal, and Ananth Devarajan taking a game off Sharath and playing a couple of close games.

Editor

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