Tokyo Olympics: After defeat in mixed doubles, Batra and Mukherjee off to promising start in TT singles

In the second round, Mukherjee will play against Portugal's Fu Yu while Manika will take on Ukraine's Margaryta Pesotska.   

Manika Batra and Sutirtha Mukherjee made promising starts to their women's singles campaign on Saturday as India lost hopes for a table tennis medal in mixed doubles vanished in no time. The start for the nation's table tennis was disheartening with Sharath Kamal and Manika losing 0-4 to Lin Yun-Ju and Cheng I-Ching of Chinese Taipei in a mixed doubles round. 

In the singles, world number 62 Manika returned to beat 94th-ranked Tin-Tin Ho of Britain 4-0 while the 98th-ranked Sutirtha made a strong impression with a 4-3 win against 78th-ranked Linda Bergstrom of Sweden. Mukherjee showed remarkable grit to down her Swedish opponent after trailing 1-3 in the best of seven affairs. She won 5-11, 11-9, 11-13, 9-11, 11-3, 11-9, 11-5.

In the second round, Mukherjee will play against Portugal's Fu Yu while Manika will take on Ukraine's Margaryta Pesotska. 

Earlier in the mixed doubles, Sharath and Manika had to make all chances count against a superior opponent from Chinese Taipei but they couldn't do so after leading 5-1 and 5-3 in the first two games.  In the end, it was a comfortable 11-8 11-6 11-5 11-4 win for Lin and Cheng.

According to a PTI report, Sharath said they should have won the first game from 5-1 and built pressure on the opponents. He also called Lin "one of the best players". Speaking about the opponents, Sharath said that they made them commit mistakes during the match and it shows "their class". 

The Indian duo had no answer to Lin's bullet-like tops-spin drives from both forehand and backhand. Though India had a lead with 5-1 in the first game, Lin and Cheng won eight points in a row and showed their dominance.