WTT Contender Muscat 2022: Manika Batra in singles round of 16
The Indian table tennis player also made it to the mixed doubles quarter-finals with G Sathiyan.
India’s Manika Batra moved onto the women’s singles round of 16 of the WTT Contender Muscat 2022 with a win over Singapore’s Lin Ye at the Sultan Qaboos Sport Complex in Oman on Wednesday**.**
Manika Batra beat Ye 3-0 (12-10, 11-8, 11-8) in the round of 32 and will face Romania’s Bernadette Szocs, a former European Championships silver medallist, in the last sixteen.
Archana Kamath also advanced with a 3-1 (6-11, 12-10, 8-11, 9-11) victory over Canada’s Mo Zhang.
Batra and Kamath’s compatriot, Sreeja Akula, however, fell to French Olympian Jia Nan Yuan 3-2 (11-8, 7-11, 11-8, 9-11, 11-8).
Sathiyan Gnanasekaran, though, lost out to Chinese teenager Lin Shidong 3-1 (8-11, 13-11, 2-11, 8-11) to drop out of the men’s singles.
In the mixed doubles, Manika Batra and partner Sathiyan Gnanasekaran moved onto the quarter-finals after receiving a walkover in their round of 16 tie against Kirill Skachkov and Olga Vorobeva. The Indian duo will play Hungary’s Nandor Ecseki and Leila Imre next.
The pair of Archana Kamath and Manav Thakkar also reached the last eight of mixed doubles with a 3-2 (11-9, 14-12, 11-2) win over Turkey's Ibrahim Gunduz and Sibel Altinkaya.
Both G Sathiyan and Manika Batra’s men’s and women’s doubles campaigns, meanwhile, ended early.
G Sathiyan and Harmeet Desai lost to Chinese Taipei’s Peng Wang-Wei and Chuang Chih-Yuan 3-2 (7-11, 12-10, 11-4, 11-13, 11-9) in the round of 16 of men’s doubles.
Peng-Chuang will face another Indian pair, Manush Shah and Manav Thakkar in the quarter-finals on Thursday. Shah-Thakkar edged past Brazilian duo Eric Jouti and Vitor Ishiy 3-2 (11-7, 3-11, 11-6, 7-11, 12-14) to progress.
In the women’s doubles, Manika Batra and Archana Kamath also bowed out from the round of 16 after losing to Hungary’s Leila Imre and Mercedes Nagyvaradi 3-0 (11-7, 11-9, 11-6).