India's two Top-ranked table tennis players Manika Batra and Sharath Kamal, lost their opening-round women's and men's singles matches, respectively. Meanwhile, India's Sathiyan Gnanasekaran made it to the second round of the WTT Contender Tunis 2021 table tennis tournament on Wednesday.
/sportzpoint/media/post_attachments/f8928fec1768f2a23d5550bfa13d2709cc75ae1619c1dba2b6435f52fc8d94fd.jpg)
Nina Mittelham, the world No. 33 from Germany, beat the 58th-ranked Manika Batra comfortably by a 3-1 (6-11, 12-10, 8-11, 3-11) margin. Later, Achanta Sharath Kamal went down fighting in the men's singles.
The fifth-seeded Sharath Kamal went to a face-off in a gruelling five-setter against Vitor Ishiy of Brazil. But eventually, he lost the round of 32 clashes 3-2 (5-11, 11-5, 9-11, 11-8, 12-10).
Sathiyan Gnanasekaran was the only Indian to make it to the next round in the singles category.
The world No. 37 and eighth-seeded G Sathiyan advanced to the Round of 16 with a 3-0 win over Alvaro Robles of Spain. The match, however, was closer than the scoreline suggests.
Only two points separated both players in all three games as G Sathiyan prevailed 11-9, 11-9, 11-9.
Both of India's men's doubles pairs also registered wins in the first round.
Achanta Sharath Kamal and Manav Thakkar defeated David Serdaroglu and Alexander Chen of Austria 3-1 while Harmeet Desai and G Sathiyan handed a 3-2 loss to Germany's Tobias Hippler and Kilian Ort.