Manika BATRA

In fact, she loves table tennis so much, she even wears a racket and ball-shaped pendant round her neck.

Like her idol Achanta Sharath Kamal, Manika Batra qualified for her maiden Olympics when she was 21. Although she was knocked out in the first round at Rio, it was a good learning curve for the Indian.

In 2017, she rose to world No. 104 on the ITTF rankings, making her the highest-ranked female table tennis player from India. Manika Batra and Mouma Das created history when they became the first Indian table tennis pair to enter the quarter-finals of the World Table Tennis Championships.

Her rapid ascent saw her greatest accomplishment so far at the 2018 Commonwealth Games when she won the women’s singles gold, beating Singapore’s Yu Mengyu in the final.

The win made Manika Batra the first Indian woman table tennis player to win an individual gold medal at the Commonwealth Games.

She also led the Indian women's team to a gold medal after beating four-time gold medalists Singapore in the final. The feat was even more impressive considering that the Singapore women's table tennis team was unbeaten in the Commonwealth Games since 2002.

Manika Batra also added a mixed doubles bronze along with Sharath Kamal at the 2018 Asian Games.

She won the ITTF’s ‘Breakthrough Star’ award later in the same year, and remains the only Indian table tennis player to receive the accolade.

At the Tokyo Olympics, Manika Batra beat Tin-Tin Ho and pulled off an upset win over higher-ranked Margaryta Pesotska in the round of 64 before falling to Sofia Polcanova in the round of 32, making her the first Indian woman to reach that stage.

Post Tokyo 2020, Manika Batra made further history when she, along with Sathiyan Gnanasekaran, became the first Indians to win a WTT event after clinching the mixed doubles title at the WTT Contender Budapest in 2021. In 2022, she paired with G Sathiyan to win a mixed doubles silver at the WTT Contender Doha and bagged a bronze win women's doubles at the WTT Star Condender in Doha with Archana Kamath.

On April 5, 2022, Manika Batra and Archana Kamath rose to world no. 4 in the WTT women's doubles ranking - the best by any Indian table tennis player in any category.

Manika Batra failed to medal at the 2022 Commonwealth Games and 2023 Asian Games but had an exceptional 2024. Besides helping the Indian women's team win a maiden bronze medal at the Asian Championships, Batra also shone individually as he made the last 16 of the women's singles tournament at the Paris 2024 Olympics.

She upset home favourite Prithika Pavade to become the first Indian paddler to reach the Round of 16 at the Olympics in a singles event. Sreeja Akula, however, joined her later.

At the Saudi Smash 2024, Manika Batra upset the People's Republic of China's Wang Manyu, a former world champion world No. 2, to register probably the most notable win of her career. She made the quarter-finals in that event, marking the best showing by any Indian at any WTT Smash event to date.