India’s Top Paddlers Battle It Out And Qualify For The Tokyo Olympics 2020

India’s top table tennis players Manika Batra and Sutirtha Mukherjee have qualified for the singles event of women’s table tennis at the Tokyo Olympics, slated to be held from July 23 this year. In the women’s singles event held in Doha earlier this week, world No 62 Batra and world No 95 Sutirtha Mukherjee were competing against each other together to qualify for the 2020 Olympics. Eventually, India’s second-highest-ranked female player Mukherjee first qualified for the Games after beating Batra in the tournament.

“I never thought I would play at the international level in the early days of my career. But ever since I started playing at that level, my target was to represent my country in the Olympics. I am happy to fulfil my dream,” Sutirtha said in a media statement to The Telegraph.

For Batra this is another feather to her cap, she was the first Indian woman to win a singles gold in table tennis at the Commonwealth Games and is an Asiad champion and Arjuna Awardee. She had also guided the Indian women’s team to a historic gold at Gold Coast in 2018 and qualified for the 2016 Rio Olympics by winning the South Asia Group qualification tournament.

At the Ultimate Table Tennis League in India, Sutirtha plays for the Mumbai Franchise – U Mumba TT and Batra represents RPSG Mavericks Kolkata.

Image courtesy: Twitter @ittfworld & UMumbaTT