Ace Indian paddler Bhavinaben Patel progressed to the Round of 16 in the women's singles Class 4 table tennis event with a hard-fought 3-1 victory over Great Britain's Megan Shackleton at the Tokyo Paralympics on Thursday.
The Indian started the match on the front foot as she took the first game 11-9
Commonwealth Games champion P Kashyap advanced to the main draw of the men's singles competition of Japan Super Series after registering twin victories in the two rounds of the qualifiers in Tokyo on Tuesday.
The former world No. 1 staved off a fightback from qualifier Lina Krasnoroutskaya to make the grade.
Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty capped off a memorable campaign at the World Badminton Championships, signing-off with a historic bronze medal in the men's doubles competition after going down narrowly to Malaysia's Aaron Chia and Soh Wooi Yik in the semi-finals, in Tokyo, on Saturday.
'Badminton at this level is a mental game.' 'Often just one or two points makes the deficit and often it's upstairs on the first floor that these things happen.'
Commonwealth Games champion Parupalli Kashyap emerged as the lone survivor at the Japan Open in an otherwise disappointing day for India as top shuttlers Saina Nehwal and Kidambi Srikanth made an early exit from the Super Series tournament in Tokyo, on Thursday.
Sharath Kamal, India's finest ever table tennis player, says he might have played the best match of his almost two-decade career despite ending on the wrong side of the result against the mighty Ma Long at the Tokyo Olympics on Tuesday.
Indian challenge ended at the Japan Open on Friday as Parupalli Kashyap was beaten by sixth seed Chou Tien Chen of Chinese Taipei in the men's singles quarter-finals.
A much-anticipated second round meeting of India's top two women shuttlers, world No 1 Saina Nehwal and P V Sindhu, failed to materiliaze as the latter came a cropper in her opening match at the Japan Open Super Series badminton tournament, in Tokyo, on Wednesday.
Young Indian shuttlers K Srikanth and H S Prannoy advanced to the quarter-finals of men's singles at the Japan Open, but it was curtains for teen sensation P V Sindhu in the US $200,000 Super Series event, at the Tokyo Metropolitan Gymnasium, on Thursday.