TT: Akula sails into round of 16; Manika loses

India’s Sreeja Akula returns to Sinagapore’s Zeng Jian in Paris yesterday. Pic/AP; PTI

Sreeja Akula rallied to enter the pre-quarterfinals after a hard-fought 4-2 win over Singapore's Jian Zeng in a women's singles round of 32 match as Indian table tennis continued to make history here on Wednesday.

On her 26th birthday, Sreeja won the match 9-11 12-10 11-4 11-5 10-12 12-10 to reach the pre-quarterfinals. She lost the opening game but fought back strongly to emerge as the winner in the contest, which lasted 51 minutes.

Sreeja will take on China's World No. 1 Sun Yingsha in the pre-quarterfinals. Having lost the first game, Sreeja rode her luck to win the second and restore parity. She was a bit fortunate to take the second game as she made quite a number of errors and squandered a three-point lead to allow Zeng claw back into the game and take it to tie-breakers.

A confident Seeja produced a dominant show to easily pocket the third game and place herself in a strong position to advance to the next round.

Meanwhile, Indian ace Batra's impressive run came to an end here on Wednesday with a 1-4 defeat at the hands of higher-ranked Japanese Miu Hirano in the women's singles pre-quarterfinals.

An error-prone Batra lost 6-11, 9-11, 11-9, 14-12, 8-11, 6-11 in 47 minutes. The 29-year-old Batra came into the match having become the first Indian table tennis player to reach the round of 16 at the Olympics following a 4-0 win over France's world number 18 Prithika Pavade on Monday.

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