Khel Ratna awardee Manika Batra has transform a family identify after her efficiency at Paris Olympics. Here is a have a look at the desk tennis participant’s 15-year-long profession.
The hearts of numerous Indians swelled with delight as Manika Batra made historical past on 29 July, 2024, by way of changing into the primary Indian desk tennis participant to achieve the spherical of 16 within the Olympic Video games singles festival.
Her victory got here after a 4-0 thrashing of Prithika Pavade of France. What provides to the fun is that Manika is recently ranked twenty eighth on the earth, 10 puts not up to Pavade. She secured her victory with sport ratings of 11-9, 11-6, 11-9, and 11-7 in opposition to her French opponent of Indian starting place.
After securing the identify of the primary Indian desk tennis participant to achieve Olympics pre-quarterfinals, Manika mirrored thru a submit on Instagram, “Attaining the pre-quarterfinals of the Ladies’s Singles in Olympics has been a milestone, however I all the time need extra. So long as I’ve a dream, an intention, I will be able to stay doing my absolute best.”
The 29-year-old hails from Delhi and is the youngest of 3 siblings. On the younger age of 4, she was once presented to the game by way of her sister, Aanchal, and brother Sahil, either one of whom additionally performed desk tennis. It turned into transparent that she was once destined for greatness when she gained a state-level under-8 event, prompting her to coach beneath trainer Sandeep Gupta at Hans Raj Style Faculty.
Manika’s upward thrust to reputation started with a silver medal within the under-21 class on the 2011 Chile Open. She additionally completed quarterfinal finishes whilst representing India on the 2014 Commonwealth Video games in Glasgow and the 2014 Asian Video games.
Her step forward arrived on the 2015 Commonwealth Desk Tennis Championships, the place she gained 3 medals, together with silver within the girls’s staff and doubles occasions and bronze in singles.
Regardless of her achievements, Manika grew up listening to, “Desk tennis is a waste of time, be a health care provider or engineer as a substitute.” Rising up in Delhi, her family taunted her for opting for sports activities as a profession. However her mom, Sushma Batra, had complete religion in her daughter’s dream to play for India, whilst her father is her cheerleader.
With restricted manner, they struggled to manage to pay for the apparatus and make the preparations for tournaments, but her mom stored encouraging Manika. “Other folks requested me why she is losing her time in recreation, however I all the time concept that sports activities had doable. She has confirmed me proper,” her mom stated.
The 2018 Asian Video games noticed Manika protected 3 gold medals in girls’s doubles and girls’s staff occasions. That very same yr, she certified for the Rio Olympics however was once defeated within the first spherical.
Manika’s most vital success got here on the 2018 Commonwealth Video games in Gold Coast, Australia, the place she led India to a historical gold medal within the girls’s staff match, defeating the dominant Singapore staff. She additionally gained India’s first-ever silver medal in girls’s doubles and claimed a huge gold within the singles match, bringing house 4 medals.
In 2018, she was once honoured with the Arjuna Award, India’s second-highest carrying honour. Two years later, in 2020, she completed the head of nationwide sports activities popularity by way of receiving the Khel Ratna, the rustic’s best carrying honour.
In next years, Manika persisted her good fortune, successful staff gold on the 2019 Commonwealth Desk Tennis Championships. Her success of turning into the primary paddler to achieve spherical of 16 surpasses her earlier report on the Tokyo Olympics, the place she turned into the primary Indian girls’s desk tennis participant to achieve the spherical of 32 in singles.
In the similar Tokyo Video games, Achanta Sharath Kamal had additionally reached the spherical of 32 within the males’s singles.
In 2021, she gained the WTT Contender Budapest blended doubles and the WTT Contender Lasko girls’s doubles. She competed within the inaugural WTT Grand Destroy match in Singapore in 2022 and completed a career-high rating of worldwide quantity 4 in girls’s doubles with Archana Girish Kamath.
Manika aspires to do for desk tennis in India what PV Sindhu and Saina Nehwal did for badminton within the nation. “Like desk tennis, badminton wasn’t so well-known (in India),” Manika stated. “However the quantity of popularity they’ve for the game, I might additionally love to take desk tennis to larger heights in India.”
While desk tennis was once her past love, Manika grew to become down modelling provides in her teenagers to pay attention to the game. Her determination has no longer best introduced her private good fortune however has additionally impressed a technology of younger desk tennis gamers in India.
Her laurels certainly make her a real icon of Indian desk tennis.
Edited by way of Padmashree Pande.