In a thrilling encounter, the Indian women's table tennis team emerged victorious against Spain with a scoreline of 3-2 in the final group game of the World Table Tennis Team Championships held on Tuesday.
Despite facing a tough challenge, the Indian team showcased resilience to secure a spot in the knock-out phase.
Initially, India found themselves trailing as Sreeja Akula and Manika Batra suffered defeats in the first two singles matches.
However, Ayhika Mukherjee's win in the third singles breathed new life into the team's campaign.
Subsequently, Manika and Sreeja displayed remarkable determination to clinch victories in the fourth and fifth singles matches, respectively.
With this win, India finished second in Group 1, trailing behind China, with three wins out of four games. Notably, their only loss came against China, despite Ayhika and Sreeja's impressive victories over the top-ranked Chinese players.
Out of the 40 participating teams, India's women's team secured one of the 24 spots in the knock-out phase.
A quarterfinal finish in the tournament would guarantee India's participation in the team event of the Paris Olympics.
India will need to win their round of 32 and subsequent round of 16 rubber to reach the last eight to qualify for the Olympics.
Sreeja lost the opening singles to Maria Xiao 9-11, 11-9, 11-13, 4-11. Sofia-Xuan Zhang made it 2-0 for Spain with a 13-11,6-11,8-11,11-9,11-7 win over India's top ranked player Manika.
Ayhika kept India alive in the contest by getting past Elvira Rad 11-8, 11-13, 11-8, 9-11, 11-4 in the third singles.
Manika then returned to blank Maria in the fourth singles 11-9, 11-2, 11-4 to make it 2-2. Sreeja sealed the tie with an 11-6, 11-13, 11-6, 11-3 win over Sofia-Xuan.
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