Singapore, Mar 10 (IANS): Indian table tennis player Ayhika Mukherjee won three qualifying rounds to make it to the women's singles main draw at the 2022 WTT Grand Smash Singapore, here on Wednesday.
In the last qualifying match, Ayhika overturned a 2-1 deficit to defeat Sabina Surjan of Serbia 3-2 (12-10, 5-11, 6-11, 11-9, 11-7) at the Singapore Sports Hub. Earlier, she blanked former European champion Daniela Dodean of Romania and Tokyo Olympian Debora Vivarelli of Italy.
From the eight Indian players -- three men and five women -- fighting for a spot in the main draw, Ayhika was the only one to qualify. The 24-year old will now join world No 49 Manika Batra in the women's singles starting on Friday.
However, Manav Thakkar, Commonwealth Games gold medallists Sutirtha Mukherjee, Harmeet Desai and Anthony Amalraj lost in the respective preliminary rounds to crash out from the first Grand Smash of the year, an olympics.com report said.
Sutirtha lost 1-3 to Mateja Jeger of Croatia after winning the second round against fellow Indian Sreeja Akula while Harmeet Desai was blanked 0-3 by Japan's Shunsuke Togami. Meanwhile, Anthony Amalraj was eliminated in the first preliminary round after losing 1-3 to Liao Cheng-ting of Chinese Taipei.
Archana Kamath and Madhurika Patkar, in the women's singles, were the other Indians who could not make it to the last qualifying round. Archana will now compete in the women's doubles with Manika Batra.
On the other hand, Manika Batra and Sathiyan Gnanasekaran, who feature in main draws of respective singles and doubles, will also team up in the mixed doubles.
In the men's singles, world No 33 Sathiyan Gnanasekaran and world No 34 Sharath Kamal are the two Indian direct entrants. The two top-ranked Indian table tennis players will also team up in the men's doubles.
The Grand Smashes, starting from this year, will now be the highest-tier event in the annual calendar. A total of four Grand Smashes will be held every year in different cities. The Grand Smash Singapore 2022 also features world No 1 Fan Zhendong and Sun Yingsha and Olympic champions Ma Long and Chen Meng.