Table Tennis has proven to be a rich haul of medals at the Commonwealth Games with India winning 20 medals from five campaigns, including the record 8 clinched at Gold Coast 2018. In fact, the sport is the sixth-best overall from 17 editions even though table tennis was introduced at the CWG in 2002.
India won three gold, two silver and three bronze at the 2018 edition in Gold Coast, Australia as Manika Batra won three medals. The 27-year-old from Delhi stunned Olympic medallist Feng Tianwei of Singapore not once but twice in the competition to secure an individual and team gold for India. The 35-year-old Singaporean will be looking to settle scores against Manika in Birmingham. One can expect her to come better prepared.
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In fact, Singapore has dominated Table Tennis at the Commonwealth Games, taking a whopping 50 medals, 21 of them Gold. This time around Manika will be joined by reigning national champion Sreeja Akula, Reeth Rishya and Diya Chitale in a new look women’s team.
As for the men’s team, Sharath Kamal, who will be featuring in his fifth and last Commonwealth Games, has Sathiyan Gnanasekaran, Harmeet Desai and Sanil Shetty for company,
Their major challenge will come from Nigeria, who have world number 12 Aruna Quadri, and England, with a much improved Liam Pitchford and veteran Paul Drinkhall in their ranks.
India are defending champions in both the women’s and men’s team competitions and will look to defend their crown as well as clinch individual medals in Birmingham.
The players had been training in Portugal before some competed in Hungary at the WTT Championships ahead of CWG. For eight players, six members will be travelling to Birmingham as part of the support staff, including two national coaches S Raman and Anindita Chakraborty, Manika Batra’s personal coach Chris Adrian Pfeiffer, masseur Harmeet Kaur, physio Vikash Singh, sports psychologist Gayatri Vartak, after some controversy, and team manager S D Mudgil, who is a member of the High Court-appointed Committee of Administrators running the Table Tennis Federation of India (TTFI).
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But it has not been all that smooth in the build-up for table tennis ahead of the CWG as three players approached the Delhi High Court against their non-selection.
The TTFI, which is run by the court-appointed Committee of Administrators (CoA), was taken to court by Diya Chitale, Manush Shah and Swastika Ghosh for non-selection to the Indian CWG squad. Eventually, only Chitale managed to get in at the expense of Archana Kamath, who was supposed to play doubles alongside Manika, with Swastika being named as stand-by.
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