Bhubaneswar: India’s hopes of podium finish in the 28th ITTF-ATTU Asian Table Tennis Team Championships 2025 ended on Monday night as the women’s team followed their male counterparts in suffering quarterfinal defeats at Kalinga Stadium complex.
Unlike the men, who were blanked 3-0 by Hong Kong a day earlier, the fourth-seeded Indian women’s team showed great fighting qualities before bowing 2-3 against Singapore.
Having received a bye into the last-eight stage, like the Indian men, Manika Batra and Diya Chitale lost 1-3 and 2-3, respectively, to their Singapore rivals in two closely-fought matches.
Down 0-2 in the best-of-five tie, Yashaswini Ghorpade won her match in three straight games.
Manika then pulled off a thrilling 3-1 win to level tie scores at 2-2.
In the deciding contest, however, Diya was no match for Singapore No. 1 Yun Zhao Tan.
The men failed to win a match, but the scoreline doesn’t tell the exact story. After Manush Shah went down 0-3 to Wong Chun Ting in the opening rubber, India’s top-ranked player Manav Thakkar and Ankur Bhattacharjee took their opponents the full distance but failed to close it out.
Manav came back from two games down only to lose 8-11, 8-11, 12-10, 11-9, 11-8 against Baldwin Chan. Ankur, on the other hand, enjoyed a 2-1 lead before succumbing 11-7, 9-11, 14-12, 6-11, 7-11 to Hang Siu Lam.
The Indian teams will now play for 5th to 8th places, with the men and women both coming up against DPR Korea on Tuesday.
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