Mumbai: Manika Batra, the 2018 Asian Games medallist and India’s most decorated female paddler, was left out of India’s 2026 Asian Games squad and named as a reserve by the Table Tennis Federation of India (TTFI) on Thursday.
TTFI’s selection committee named a 10-member squad of five men and five women, “selecting players primarily based on world and national rankings,” as per a TTFI statement. Although Manika is ranked 51st in the world and is India’s No. 2 in women’s singles, her absence from the national circuit — and thus the national rankings — meant she lost the selectors’ votes.
Had Manika been in the top 50, she would have been an automatic pick. World No.45 Sreeja Akula is in the squad despite being 27th in the latest national rankings.
“As per the selection criteria, those in the top 50 of the international rankings get automatically selected. For the others, there is weightage given to international and domestic rankings, and points from those are considered,” Kamlesh Mehta, TTFI secretary general, told HT.
Mehta, who was the convenor of the meeting and did not have voting rights, said that the majority of the nine-member selection panel voted for the selected team.
Mehta said the TTFI’s selection criteria, set in 2023 and followed for this Asian Games, gives 50% weightage to international performance, 40% to national performance and 10% to the selection committee’s discretion, if needed.
Manika does not feature at all in the latest national rankings because she did not participate in domestic events during the season. That includes the senior nationals of 2025, held in Indore in March this year, and of 2024.
In the latest international rankings, Manika, a former top-25 player, is 51st. She is three points behind the world No.50. Asked if there was any scope for changes should she return to the top 50, Mehta said, “That is for the selection committee to decide, not me”.
Manika is currently competing in the WTT Star Contender Ljubljana and won her opening match on Thursday. It remains to be seen if she takes any step to challenge the selection, as in the past.
Over the last few years, Indian TT has had players go to court over selection issues. Manika herself dragged the TTFI to court in 2021 over selection issues, which led to the federation being run by a Committee of Administrators. Diya Chitale and Archana Kamath also took the legal route before the 2022 Commonwealth Games.
Interestingly, for the 2024 Paris Olympics squad, TTFI picked Archana Kamath over Ayhika Mukherjee as the third player for the women’s squad citing Archana’s higher world ranking as one of the factors.
The need for “balance” in the selection system and its various weightages was highlighted by Massimo Costantini, Indian TT’s former foreign coach, whose contract ran out last month.
“Should we give up some world-class players because they’re not performing well domestically? This is a point of discussion,” Costantini told HT last month. “It’s very complicated. But we can find the balance in this.”
The women’s team for the upcoming Asian Games in Aichi-Nagoya is led by Sreeja, followed by reigning national singles champion Yashaswini Ghorpade, runner-up Syndrela Das, and Diya Chitale (they are the top 3 in the national rankings). Sutirtha Mukherjee, who along with Ayhika won a historic doubles bronze medal at the Hangzhou Asian Games, completes the squad based on her strong domestic ranking despite being 124th internationally as India No.8.
The men’s team is more straightforward, with G Sathiyan, Harmeet Desai, Manav Thakkar, Manush Shah and Payas Jain making the squad.
The doubles pairing of Sutirtha and Ayhika gave Indian TT reason to cheer at the Asian Games three years ago. This time too, the onus will be on doubles, especially the world No.4 men’s pair of Manav and Manush and the mixed pair of Manush and Diya, to try and make the podium.
