World Team Table Tennis Championships: Despite spirited comeback win, Indian women face challenging route to Paris Olympics

The Indian women’s team stood firm and launched a spirited comeback after going two matches down to beat Spain 3-2 in their final group-stage clash of the World Team Table Tennis Championships in Busan on Tuesday.

With the narrow win, India finished second in their group with three wins from four matches, and made it to the knockouts, but they have been handed a challenging draw that could thwart their quest to qualify for the Olympics as a team.

India have to reach the quarterfinal of this tournament to earn a direct qualification for the Paris Games. In the Round of 32, they face a strong Italy team who finished third in their group. They may go into that game as favourites, but the winner of the tie will meet a very strong Chinese Taipei side in the pre-quarterfinal.

Sreeja Akula takes Team India across the finish line, taking down Sofia-Xuan Zhang to end Team Spain’s hopes of qualifying to the knockout rounds 💥 #ITTFWorlds2024 #Busan2024 #TableTennis #PingPong pic.twitter.com/y9lKn9dQtz

— World Table Tennis (@WTTGlobal) February 20, 2024

Ayhika leads fightback

It was Sreeja Akula who played India’s opening match against Spain’s World No. 63 Maria Xiao and the national champion was unable to counter Xiao’s aggressive play. Sreeja, who reached a career-high ranking of World No. 49 only earlier this month, did manage to win the second game courtesy of some powerful forehand winners, but Xiao responded with even more aggression to take the tie 3-1 (11-9, 9-11,13-11,11-4).

Spain then went 2-0 up with World No. 120 Sofia-Xuan Zhang stunning India’s top-ranked player Manika Batra in five games. Manika, who’s trying to be more aggressive with her forehand, did well against the quick 24-year-old but just wasn’t able to finish off crucial points, losing 3-2 (13-11,6-11,8-11,11-9,11-7)

The third rubber was a do-or-die situation, but luckily for India, it was Ayhika Mukherjee, who beat China’s World No. 1 Sun Yingsha in the first match of the tournament, up against the slightly inexperienced Elvira Rad. The Spaniard didn’t make it easy, stretching Ayhika to five games before the Asian Games bronze medallist reached into her well of experience to close out the final game and drag India back into the tie.

It was then time for a Manika special. India’s ‘Golden Girl’ seemed unperturbed by her earlier loss, and played arguably her best match of the tournament to thrash Xiao 3-0. She seemed to find her forehand smashes that were missing in the earlier match, and that will bode well for India in the knockouts.

Sreeja, who only last month won her first WTT title at the Feeder event in Corpus Christi, finished off the remarkable comeback for India, winning her match against Zhang 3-1. It did seem that Zhang was suffering from some sort of arm injury in the fifth game, but Sreeja and India didn’t seem to mind.

Chinese Taipei on their minds

The Indian team will undoubtedly be focused on the match against Italy early on Wednesday, but they will also be gearing up to face Chinese Taipei, should they reach the pre-quarterfinals.

The Chinese Taipei side has Cheng I-Ching, World No. 10, who only last month won the women’s singles title of the WTT Goa Star Contender, beating India’s Sreeja Akula in the quarterfinal. They also have World No. 41 Szu-Yu Chen, who also recently defeated Sreeja in Doha last month.

India will however take heart from the fact that Manika has beaten Cheng in straight games last year and, of course, they are a superbly confident squad, especially after this win over Spain and their wins over the World No. 1 and World No. 2 in their opening encounter.

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