India is lucky to be blessed with some brilliant table tennis players who never fail to surprise us with their amazing skills. With its increasing revolution across the world, this sport has also emerged as a section of interest in India.
Since its origin, India has produced some exciting table tennis talent. In this article, I present to you my top 5 best Indian table tennis players.
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5) Neha Aggarwal
Neha Aggarwal is a table tennis player from Delhi. In 2008, she won a gold medal at the Commonwealth Youth Games. Neha also represented India from 2001–2014 and won at the 2009 Commonwealth Championships held in Glasgow.
4) Ankita Das
Ankita Das is a professional table tennis player from Siligui, West Bengal. She represented India at the 2012 London Olympics, where she was also the youngest participant in her category.
The now-28-year-old won two gold medals at Girls Singles level in 2007. These wins took place at the Canada Cadet and South Africa Cadet tournaments. Ankita also won the National Table Tennis Championship in 2014.
3) Soumyajit Ghosh
Soumyajit Ghosh, from Siliguri, West Bengal, is the country’s youngest national champion, a record he achieved at the age of 19. The now-28-year old was also the youngest-ever Indian player to qualify for the 2012 London Olympics. Ghosh vanquished his Indian countrymen Sharath Kamal, Harmeet Desai and Anthony Amalraj in the South Asian Zone capability occasion to meet all the requirements for the Rio Olympics. His other achievements also include winning the bronze medal in mixed doubles at the World Junior Championships in Bahrain.
2) Sharath Kamal
39-year-old Sharath Kamal is the only Indian player to become a nine-time senior national champion. Kamal, who participated at the 2004 Athens and 2008 Beijing Olympics, was also the first Indian to win a singles title on the International Table Tennis Federation’s pro tour.
Knee damage in 2015 really deferred the career of one of the best table tennis players in India. Due to his national performances, Kamal has also been awarded the Padma Shri and the Arjuna Award.
Also Read – TOKYO OLYMPICS: INDIA’S TABLE TENNIS CONTINGENT
1) Manika Batra
26-year-old Delhi-born Manika Batra began playing table tennis at the age of four. In 2011, she won silver at the U21 Classification of the Chile Open. She was one of the main representatives of the Indian Table Tennis women’s team at the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow.
Batra competed as a quarter-finalist at the 2014 Asian Games and qualified for the women’s singles event of the 2016 Summer Olympics. This was by enduring and winning the cluster of South Asian tournaments in April 2016. She appeared at the 2016 Olympics, but lost to Katarzyna Grzybowska of Poland in the first round of the women’s singles event.
Manika’s best achievement to date has to be winning three gold medals at the 2016 South Asian Games. She also won three medals at the 2015 Commonwealth table tennis championship.
Batra is the highest ranked Indian female table tennis player of all time and will always be considered as one of the best players in the sport. For all her achievements, she was awarded the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna Award in 2020.
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