Table-tennis star and former Commonwealth Games winner, Manika Batra swept into the second round of the ITTF World Table Tennis Championships in Doha on Sunday.
In straight games, the 46th-ranked player in the world defeated 89th-ranked Nigerian Fatimo Bello 4-0 (11-5, 11-6, 11-8, 11-2). Park Gahyeon, a 17-year-old from South Korea, will be her next opponent, according to Olympics.com.
Manav Thakkar, the world number 49 and best men’s singles player in India, was also off to a strong start after defeating Timothy Choi of New Zealand, ranked 168th, 4-1 (11-3, 11-8, 6-11, 11-7, 14-12). After losing 4-1 (11-4, 7-11, 9-11, 10-12, 8-11) to Hong Kong’s world No. 129 Lam Siu Hang, teenager Ankur Bhattacharjee was eliminated in the first round.
Mehdi Bouloussa and Malissa Nasri of Algeria were comfortably defeated by Manush Shah and Diya Chitale in the mixed doubles tournament, winning 3-0 (11-2, 11-7, 11-6). They advanced to the second round of their singles competition on Saturday after winning the World Table Tennis (WTT) Contender Tunis mixed doubles title earlier this year. In the first round of the men’s doubles, Harmeet Desai and Sathiyan Gnanasekaran lost 3-1 (9-11, 12-10, 14-16) and were eliminated. 10–12) to Vladislav Ursu of Moldova and Maciej Kolodziejczyk of Austria.
In mixed doubles, Desai again did not have much of an impact. Along with Yashaswini Ghorpade defeated French duo Thibault Poret and Leana Hochart 2-0, but he lost 3-2 after fumbling three match points (11-8, 11-6, 10-12, 8-11, 10-12).