Manika, Sreeja and a need to revolutionise their game

India TT head coach Costantini says if the country's top two paddlers do not evolve their games, they will be stuck

- Rutvick Mehta

MUMBAI: Last year, Indian women's table tennis had walked into uncharted territory. At the Paris Olympics, Manika Batra and Sreeja Akula became the first Indian paddlers to reach as far as the round of 16 in singles. The women's team made it to the quarterfinals there, before going one better at the Asian TT Cham-

pionships to grab a bronze medal taking down South Korea.

This year, the team crashed out of the home Asian TT Team Championships in the quarterfinals after being taken down by Singapore.

The slide from the unparalleled surge of the overall team reflects the individual fortunes of its two headline acts in Paris. Manika and Sreeja aren't exactly in a freefall, but neither are they soaring higher.

India's top two woman paddlers have been a constant in the world's top 50 for a couple of years now - Manika even for longer. Apart from a brief period after the Olympics when Sreeja touched a career-high 21 and Manika was 25, the two have largely circled around the 25 to 50 rankings range. They've knocked on the top 15-20 door without having broken it so far.

This year, Sreeja has shuffled from 29 (Jan 2025) to 33 (March) to 37 (July) to 38 (present), and Manika from 28 to 27 to 49 to 43, with both showing indifferent form on the WTT tour.