Manika Batra was the main player who led India to win over Romania with a score of 3-2 in a nail biting match thus enabling them to enter quarter finals of women’s team event in table tennis at the Paris Olympics on Monday.
India took an early 2-0 lead, but Romania fought back valiantly to level the score at 2-2, Parami News reported. However, for her match Manika rose magnificently and won it for her country.
Sreeja Akula and Archana Kamath of India set the tone by beating Adina Diaconu and Elizabeta Samara in the opening doubles’ game by scores of 11-9, 12-10, 11-7.
Manika effortlessly downed Bernadette Szocs who has a superior ranking than hers in three straight games. The final score line was just as much as possible against their fourth seeded rivals: 11-5, 11-7, 11-7. The tournament sees India ranked eleventh seed.
The second singles encounter however went against India. Sreeja Akula lost in five sets to European champion Elizabeta Samara despite having initially taken the first game. In fact Samara won 4:11;8:11;6:11;8:8/11.
Next up after Sreeja’s defeat is Archana versus Bernadette. Scores of 5-11 (Archana), followed by (Bernadette) who regained confidence winning the next one played and finally ending with another 2 wins secured this match which extended tie to all deciding match.
The final match saw Manika completely dominate Adina winning it (3–0 (11–5, 9–11) in favor of Indian National Team).
Indian national team will then face either USA or Germany in next round.
In addition to this Japan Poland France and Thailand are in the same draw.
Last week, Manika and Sreeja created history as they became the first Indian players to reach the Round of 16 in singles at the Olympics. Unfortunately neither player could progress further as they both lost to higher ranked opponents.
