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The Indian trio of Manika Batra, Sreeja Akula and Archana Kamath suffered a 1-3 loss against Germany in the women's Table Tennis event at the Paris Olympics 2024. The Indian women's side were in action on August 5 where they took down Romania 3-2 to qualify for the quarterfinal stage at the South Paris Arena.
The quarterfinal started on a disappointing note as the doubles pair of Sreeja Akula and Archana Kamath suffered a 5-11, 11-8, 10-12, 6-11 in the opening match of the best-of-five tie against Germany's Xiaona Shan and Yuan Wan. The misfortunes continued as Manika Batra had to settle for an 11-8, 7-11, 5-11, 7-11 loss to Annett Kaufmann.
Keeping India alive in the contest, Archana produced a massive win as she defeated Xioana Shan 19-17, 1-11, 11-5, 11-9 and cut the deficit to 1-2. Then in the fourth match, Sreeja Akula took on Annett Kaufmann, and lost the first two games 6-11 and 7-11, before starting Game 3 down 0-3. Though the Indian picked up a few quick points, the German jumped to a 7-4 lead. Kaufmann surged forward as she took the third game 11-7 and took her side into the semi-final.
The Indian men's Table Tennis team of Achanta Sharath Kamal, Harmeet Desai and Manav Thakkar suffered a 0-3 loss against China in the Round of 16 clash. The doubles pair of Desai-Thakkar suffered a 0-3 loss while Kamal and Thakkar had to settle for 1-3 defeats in their singles clashes.
