Bangkok: India’s no.1 paddler Manika Batra progressed to the quarterfinals of ITTF-ATTU Asian Cup table tennis tournament, beating world number 7, Chen Xingtong of China in the round-of-16 in 7 sets (8-11, 11-9, 11-6, 11-6, 9-11, 8-11, 11-9).
Batra will lock horns with the world No. 23 Chen Szu Yu from Taipei in the quarterfinals.
After upsetting world number 7, Batra said: “I am really happy beating world no. 7 in the world, will just keep continuing playing my best and will keep this focus for next rounds. This was my 3rd win against a Chinese player recently. Thank you everyone for supporting and cheering for me”.
In the men’s singles, both the Indian challengers – Sathiyan Gnanasekaran, world No. 39, and India’s national champion Sharath Kamal, ranked 44th – crashed out after losing in the first round on Thursday.
Sathiyan put up a strong fight against world No. 26 Yukiya Uda of Japan and levelled the match at 3-3 after being 2-0 down. However, he eventually bit the dust in the final game and lost the match 3-4 (9-11, 8-11, 11-7, 11-9, 6-11, 12-10, 6-11).
Later in the day, Commonwealth Games champion Sharath won the first game against world No. 16 Chuang Chih-Yuan of Chinese Taipei but went down in the next four to lose 1-4 (11-7, 4-11, 7-11, 4-11, 6-11).
The three-day table tennis competition will conclude on November 19.
Chetan Baboor, with silver in 1997 and bronze in 2000, is the only Indian table tennis player to win a medal at the Asian Cup.
