Manika Batra was knocked out of the World Singles Olympic Qualification Tournament after she suffered a 1-4 defeat to Monaco's Xiaoxin Yang in the women's singles stage-I semi-final match in Doha on Monday.
The 32-year-old clinched his fourth gold medal at his third Olympics by defeating compatriot Fan Zhendong 11-4, 10-12, 11-8, 11-9, 3-11, 11-7.
'As of now, there's no update from the Railways. The scheduled time (of departure) here is 4am but we doubt the train will start from Chennai tonight'
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will present her sixth straight Budget ahead of the Parliamentary elections, matching the record of former Prime Minister Morarji Desai. Sitharaman in her pre-election Budget, which technically is a vote on account and popularly termed an interim Budget, will seek Parliament's nod for a grant in advance to meet the central government's essential expenditure for the first four months of the new fiscal year that starts in April. A new government elected after the April/May general elections will present the full Budget, likely in July.
Cutting a classy figure and looking all dapper for the Laver Cup gala dinner on Thursday night, Roger Federer played a few minutes of table tennis against Argentine Diego Schwartzman, tux and all!
India's leading player Sharath Kamal overcame a sluggish start to beat Portugal's Tiago Apolonia in the men's singles second round, while the women challenge ended with Manika Batra and Sutirtha Mukherjee losing to their superior opponents at the Tokyo Olympics on Monday.
The Chennai paddler feels that it's about time that he changes colour of the medal to gold during the upcoming edition in Gold Coast.
Sharath Kamal struggled in the first game but pulled himself up just in time to beat Portugal's Tiago Polonia 2-11, 11-8, 11-5, 9-11, 11-6, 11-9 in 49 minutes.
Sathiyan, who has qualified for the Tokyo Olympics, had donated Rs 1.25 lakh to the Centre and Tamil Nadu government in 2020 for their fight against the coronavirus.
In para taekwondo, India will be solely represented by 21-year-old Aruna Tanwar. The Haryana-based athlete, who will participate in the women's under 49kg K44 category, will be in action on September 2 from the round-of-16 rounds.
Her personal coach Sanmay Paranjape was controversially cleared to travel with her to the Tokyo, but not allowed to stay at the Games Village with the national team.
Manika, the highest ranked Indian in women's singles, got off to a flying start early in the first session, defeating 152nd ranked Englishwoman Ho Tin-Tin 3-0 (11-4,11-8,11-5).
In a strange incident, a man who had gone missing some 33 years ago returned to his home in Rajasthan's Alwar much to the astonishment of his family who had stopped believing that he could be alive and had even got a death certificate made for him.
Stuck indoors and without a training partner during India's coronavirus lockdown, the country's top table tennis player Sathiyan Gnanasekaran says he is staying sharp by practising with a robot. The governing International Table Tennis Federation has suspended all of its events and activities until June 30 and the three-week lockdown in force in India has disrupted the daily routines of athletes like Sathiyan.
Manika said she has been working on introducing variations in her style of play.
While Payas lost his semifinal match to China's Peng Xiang, Suhana too went down fighting against top-seeded Egyptian Hana Goda.
They have also taken help from Soumyadeep Roy and Kamlesh Mehta to shortlist the needy ones from across the country.
Achanta Sharath Kamal said the ongoing protest by the wrestlers has shown the importance of an athletes' body in all National Sports Federations.
Manika Batra's sensational run at the Commonwealth Games fetched her another medal on Sunday. Teaming up with Sathiyan Gnanasekaran she bagged the mixed doubles bronze, thereby winning a medal in every event she competed in at the Gold Coast Games .
The reigning world champion duo of Chen Meng and Wang Yidi gasped in surprise seeing the backhand return of Ayhika Mukherjee, who, in part, engineered India's biggest triumph of the Asian Games thus far.
Commonwealth Games gold medalist Manika Batra said reading books, meditation, and watching TV series are some of the activities which is helping her spend time during the coronavirus enforced nationwide lockdown. The Indian table tennis star also stressed the importance of working on physical fitness and staying positive as the country continues to reel under the pandemic.
The postponement of Tokyo Olympics to next year due to the coronavirus pandemic has given India's table tennis squad more time to prepare and given the current scenario, the sport's governing body TTFI is looking to fill the head coach's position locally rather than hiring a foreign coach. The head coach position has been lying vacant since the 2018 Asian Games due to multiple factors.
The government denied granting permission to serve liquor at wedding halls, even as the opposition parties slammed the ruling Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam's move to dilute the total prohibition policy.
At almost 57, Ni Xialian has competed in the 2000, 2008, 2012 and 2016 Olympics, achieving her best result when, aged 37, she reached the last 16 in Sydney. She hopes Tokyo 2020 will go ahead.
The statue depicts Zlatan Ibrahimovic celebrating in his own trademark style, with arms outstretched.
'I would like to thank the Government, the Table Tennis Federation of India (TTFI) and most importantly, my family, who has been there for me and motivated me along this journey'
"I'm sure BCCI will sort this out," said Ganguly
The Table Tennis Federation of India (TTFI) will make a fresh attempt to organise a training camp at the end of June but top players including Sharath Kamal and G Sathiyan are not ready to travel anytime soon as the situation remains "unsafe".
The domination of home paddlers could be gauged from the fact that all finals on Monday featured only the Indians.
Men could extend their reign for the second successive time after annexing the title in the previous edition at Surat in 2015. The Indian men had won their first crown in Kuala Lumpur in 2004.
While Indian table tennis took giant strides in the year, a star too was born with Manika Batra pocketing as many as four medals including two historic gold medals at the 2018 Commonwealth Games.
Sathiyan rose four spots to be placed 24th in the latest ITTF rankings, following his impressive sixth place finish in the Asia Cup in Yokohama earlier this month. Last week, he was the sole Indian to reach the round of 32 in the World Championships in Hungary.
Indian table tennis men's team settled for a historic bronze medal after losing 0-3 to South Korea in a lop-sided semifinal at the 18th Asian Games, in Jakarta, on Tuesday.
'I am very happy to get national recognition of my long and hard work.'
Ace paddler Sharath Kamal, who clinched a historic mixed doubles bronze with Manika Batra at the Asian Games last year, feels the road to the 2020 Tokyo Olympics seems difficult in the newly-introduced category, but once the spot is booked, a medal win is possible.
Manika Batra, on Saturday, won a first ever women's singles table tennis gold for India at the CWG
Manika Batra and Mouma Das made history by becoming the first Indian pair to reach the quarter-finals of the World Table Tennis Championships in Dusseldorf, on Thursday.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Wednesday again took a digital tablet wrapped in a traditional 'bahi-khata' style pouch as she headed for Parliament to present Union Budget 2023-24 in a paperless format just like the previous two years. She posed for the traditional 'briefcase' picture outside her office along with her team of officials before heading to meet the President. She, however, was holding a tablet instead of a briefcase to present the Budget in a digital format.
The government on Wednesday reconstituted the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister (EAC-PM) under existing chairman Bibek Debroy, for a period of two years. V Anantha Nageswaran has been dropped, Rakesh Mohan (former deputy governor of RBI), Poonam Gupta (director general of NCAER) and TT Ram Mohan (professor, IIM Ahmedabad) have been appointed as part-time members of the reconstituted EAC-PM. The other part-time members of the Council include Sajid Chenoy, Neelkanth Mishra and Nilesh Shah.
Sheep eyeball juice, frog smoothies and fruit bat soup... Which one do you find yucky?
