Table Tennis: Ankur Bhattacharjee qualifies for main draw of 2025 China Smash
Sathiyan Gnansekaran, Harmeet Desai, Manush Shah bowed out in qualification rounds.
Ankur Bhattacharjee celebrating his win against Frenchman Lillian Berdat in tie two of UTT 2024. (Photo Credit: UTT)
India's teenage paddler Ankur Bhattacharjee qualified for the main draw of the prestigious 2025 WTT China Smash, winning the qualification round on Saturday.
Bhattacharjee registered a come-from-behind 12-14, 11-6, 9-11, 11-8, 13-11 over China's Zhou Kai in a thrilling final qualifying round on Saturday.
Bhattacharjee is one of the eight players to make it to the men's singles main draw from the qualifying rounds. He'll join India's highest ranked paddler Manav Thakkar in the men's singles main draw.
Earlier, Bhattacharjee had started his qualification round campaign with a 3-2 win over Lam Siu Hang of Hong Kong. He then took down Canada's Eugene Wang 3-1 in the second round before going up against Zhou.
Meanwhile, the top seeded paddler in the qualification round Sathiyan Gnanasekaran lost his very first match to bow out of contention. Harmeet Desai also lost in the first round, whereas Manush Shah lost in the second qualification round.
In women's singles qualification round, India's Diya Chitale and Swastika Ghosh lost in the second round whereas Ayhika Mukherjee and Yashashwini Ghorpade suffered opening round loses.
The main draw matches at 2025 WTT China Smash will start from Sunday.
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