Manika Batra, Harmeet Desai start with wins in Commonwealth Games

DOHA: Commonwealth Games (CWG) gold medallist Manika Batra on Monday began her campaign at the World Table Tennis (WTT) Contender on a winning note here.

Manika, 25, who won two gold medals at the 2018 Gold Coast CWG, registered a 12-10, 14-12, 11-8 win over Sofia-Xuan Zhang of Spain in her first-round match of the women's singles event.

Asian Games medallist Harmeet Desai, too, had a good start as he defeated compatriot Anthony Amalraj 11-5, 12-10, 11-6 to progress to the third round of men's singles qualifiers.

However, it wasn't a good day for Sutirtha Mukherjee, Mudit Dani, and Diya Chitale as they suffered defeats in their singles qualifying round matches.

Mukherjee, a former national champion, failed to get the better of Ukraine's Tetyana Bilenko 5-11, 3-11, 12-10, 9-11 while 200th ranked Dani found the going tough against world No.85 Olah Benedek of Finland.

Dani won the first game, but couldn't sustain his efforts and lost the contest 8-11, 6-11, 11-8, 6-11.

Diya too started off well against Romania's Irina Ciobanu, winning the opening game. But as the match progressed she couldn't capitalise on her chances and lost the match 11-8, 9-11, 3-11, 8-11 against world No.98 Irina.

India's world No.32 Achanta Sharath Kamal and newly-crowned national champion Sathiyan Gnanasekaran have received direct entries into the men's singles main draw. IANS

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