Manika Batra, Sreeja Akula win group stage openers

Paris 2024 Olympians Manika Batra and Sreeja Akula won their opening matches at the ITTF World Cup 2025 at Macao on Monday.

Manika Batra, 30th in the women’s singles table tennis rankings, defeated world No. 186 Maylis Giret of New Caledonia 4-0 (11-1, 11-2, 11-6, 11-4) in the Group 16 match that lasted a little over 18 minutes.

Manika will face Brazil’s Bruna Takahashi, who is the highest-ranked player in her group in 23rd spot, in her next match.

The ITTF World Cup 2025 is being held in two stages - group matches and knockouts.

The men’s and women’s players at the ITTF World Cup 2025 have been divided into 16 groups of three players each. Group winners will progress to the knockouts. India do not have any participants in the men’s draw.

Group stage matches consist of four games each with players ranked based on their overall win-loss ratio across both fixtures. The top performers with the best ratios in terms of games won in both their matches will advance to the knockout rounds.

World No. 34 Sreeja Akula, competing in Group 9, also won her tournament opener after defeating Australia’s Constantina Psihogios, 68th in the women’s singles table tennis rankings, 3-1 (11-9, 11-4, 11-8, 6-11).

Sreeja Akula, a Commonwealth Games gold medallist in mixed doubles, will take on three-time Olympian and the current European Games champion Bernadette Szocs of Romania in her final group match.

Manika Batra and Sreeja Akula are the only Indian table tennis players competing at the ongoing ITTF World Cup.

The knockout stage, which is scheduled to begin from Thursday, will be held in best-of-seven games. The ITTF World Cup 2025 will conclude on Sunday. India have never won a medal at the ITTF World Cup.

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