Table Tennis: Batra, Sharath, Sathiyan look to seal Olympic qualification at Doha tournament

A total of nine qualification places for the Tokyo Olympics will be up for grabs when the World Singles Qualification Tournament gets underway at the Ali Bin Hamad Al Attiya Arena in Doha, Qatar between 14-17 March 2021.

The quotas for the WSQT were confirmed following the latest update of the 2021 calendar and current planning of pending qualification events.

Other factors that were also taken into consideration included qualification events that were either pending or completed, the number of players who have already qualified in one or multiple events (singles, teams, mixed doubles) and the total number of table tennis quotas that have been reserved and are available.

For India, world no 63 Manika Batra and world no 96 Sutirtha Mukherjee will be taking part in the women’s competition while world no 32 Achanta Sharath Kamal and world no 38 Sathiyan Gnanasekaran will try their luck in the men’s competition.

Batra and Sathiyan recently won the Indian national championships and will hope to seal a slot for the Olympics but they will run into some top-quality opposition at the event.

In January 2020, India’s men’s and women’s teams had crashed out of the qualification tournament but perhaps they will have better luck in the individual competition.

For the men’s singles qualification, three spots will be available for qualification in stage one. Entries will be split into three knockout rounds, starting from the round of 32, with the winner of each knockout round qualifying for the singles event at the Tokyo Olympics.

The losing finalist and semi-finalist from each of the three knockouts will then proceed to stage two where one final spot is available. The losing finalist and semi-finalists from each of the three knockout rounds will then be drawn into one final knockout round where the winner will eventually qualify for the singles event at the Tokyo Olympics.

For the women’s singles, four spots are available for qualification in stage one. Entries will be split into four knockouts starting from the round of 16, with the winner of each knockout qualifying for the singles event at the Tokyo Olympics.

The losing finalist from each of the four knockouts will proceed to stage two where one final spot is at stake. The losing finalist from each of the four knockouts will be drawn into one final knockout where the winner will qualify for the singles event at the Tokyo Olympics.