ITTF World Youth C'ships 2023: India U19 women TT team clinch bronze

India U-19 women's table tennis team won the bronze medal at the ITTF World Youth Championships 2023 in Slovenia on Tuesday. This is the first-ever team medal for India in the U-19 category at the World Youth Championships.

The team consisting of Yashaswini Ghorpade, Suhana Saini, Sayali Wani, and Taneesha Kotecha lost to the top-seeded China in the semi-finals to clinch the bronze medal.

The Indian team got a bye in the round of 16 as they were fourth-seeded in the tournament. In the quarterfinal, they were up against a tough Egyptian side, led by world no.30 Hana Goda.

Hana proved her worth and took the first match of the tie with an easy straight-set (11-6,11-4,11-4) win over Suhana Saini and gave Egypt a 1-0 lead to start with. Yashaswini and Taneesha won their respective matches with a 3-0 victory over Farida Badawy and Mariam Younes respectively to give back India a 2-1 lead.

In the fourth match, Hana returned for the reverse singles and again proved too much for Yashaswini and registered another 3-0 win to tie the set to 2-2.

Suhana played the fifth match of the tie for India losing her first game 8-11 to Farida but then regained momentum to win three sets on a trot to win the match for India and confirm a medal from the event.

In the bronze medal match, India faced the top-seeded and the giants of the game China. In the first match of the tie Sayali Wani, who was playing her first match of the tournament, fought hard against China's Chen Yi in a five-set thriller, where Chen took the fifth set 17-15 after a marathon of a game to lead 1-0 in the tie.

Xu Yi and Qin Yuxuan then easily closed the tie with consecutive 3-0 wins over Yashaswini and Suhana respectively. So, India has to be satisfied with the bronze medal after this defeat.

On the other hand, the Men's U19 team lost 1-3 to Chinese Taipei in the round of 16, and the U15 women's team lost to South Korea in the quarter-final.