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Table Tennis

Manika Batra-Sathiyan Gnanasekaran enter Top 10 in Mixed Doubles rankings

The dynamic table tennis pair of Manika Batra and Sathiyan Gnanasekaran broke into the Top 10 of the Mixed Doubles ITTF rankings, the highest-ever for an Indian pair.

Manika Batra and Sathiyan Gnanasekaran
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Manika Batra and Sathiyan Gnanasekaran (Source: ITTF)

By

The Bridge Desk

Published: 18 Feb 2022 3:59 PM GMT

Creating a new piece of history, the ace table tennis duo of Manika Batra and Sathiyan Gnanasekaran moved up in the newly released International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF) World Rankings and became the highest-ranked Indian Mixed Doubles pair at World No. 10.

Hiking up a spot from their previous position of World No. 11, the Manika Batra-Sathiyan Gnanasekaran pair became the first Indian pair to achieve such a high World rank in Mixed Doubles.

Perfectly complementing each other in their game styles, the combination of Manika Batra and Sathiyan Gnanasekaran is one to reckon with and they are the big hopes for India at the 2024 Paris Olympics, as well, in the Mixed Doubles event.

In fact, at the 2018 Gold Coast Commonwealth Games, the duo of Batra and Gnanasekaran had gone on to defeat the veteran pair of Sharath Kamal and Mouma Das to clinch the bronze medal.

In 2021, the pair enjoyed a good outing with a win at the 2021 WTT Contender Budapest followed by a semi-final at the 2021 WTT Contender Tunis and a quarter-final run at the ITTF World Championships.

Individually as well, Manika Batra enjoys a good ranking at World No. 50 while Sathiyan Gnanasekaran is at World No. 32.

As per reports, Batra and Gnanasekaran have been training in Chennai for a short stint ahead of the 2022 table tennis season beginning full-fledged from March. The newly-inducted World No. 10 pair will be competing in a string of WTT tournaments in March - from Muscat, Singapore to Doha, in what looks to be a packed month ahead.

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