Batra and Sathiyan becomes first Indian mixed doubles pair to enter top 5

Table tennis players Manika Batra and Gnanasekaran Sathiyan on Tuesday scripted history by becoming the first Indian mixed doubles pair to enter the top five of the ITTF Table Tennis World RankingsManika and Sathiyan climbed up in the rankings after making it to the final of the WTT Contender event in Nova Gorica Slovenia where they lost to South Koreas Lim Jonghoon and Shin Yubin 30 in the finalThe India pair earned 280 ranking points for their performance at the event which helped them overtake Hong Kongs Tokyo 2020 bronze medallist Doo Hoi Kem and her twotime world championship bronze medalwinning partner Wong Chunting for the world No5 spotLast year in August Batra and Gnanasekaran became the first Indian table tennis players to win a WTT Contender title when they defeated Hungarys Nandor Ecseki and Dora Madarasz in BudapestAlso Read Better late than never Sharath Kamal on winning Khel Ratna at 40Later they became the firstever Indian mixed doubles pair to break into the top 15 of world rankingsSince then the Indian pair broke into the top 10 for the first time in March this year They reached the final of WTT Contender Doha in March but lost to the world No1 pair of Lin YunJu and Cheng IChing from Chinese TaipeiBreaking into the worlds top5 rankings has truly been a dream come true moment said Sathiyan in a tweetIt is indeed a great milestone towards our goal of reaching the pinnacle and winning that elusive Olympic medal he addedManika and Sathiyan are also Indias topranked players in womens and mens singles respectivelyThe 27yearold Manika is 44th in the womens singles world rankings while womens national champion Sreeja Akula is ranked 76thOn the other hand the 29yearold Sathiyan is 39th in the mens singles rankings followed by Commonwealth Games 2022 champion Sharath Kamal at 44thIn womens doubles Manika and her partner Archana Girish Kamath remained at world No 5 while Harmeet Desai and Manav Thakkar are Indias topranked mens doubles pair at world No 29This story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever