Aggressive Manika storms into Asian Cup semi-finals

MUMBAI: Chinese No 5, Chinese Taipei No 1: Manika Batra has had a couple of giant-killing days in Bangkok.

The weapon: her attacking, flattening forehand play.

It was put to good use again by the Indian on Friday in her 4-3 (6-11, 11-6, 11-5, 11-7, 8-11, 9-11, 11-9) victory against world No 23 Chen Szu-Yu in the quarter-finals of the IITF-ATTU Asian Cup. Manika entered the contest with a spring in her step after taking down world No 7 Chen Xingtong of China in the Round of 16 a day earlier. She now finds herself in the semi-final of the elite Asian individual event as the first Indian woman and only the second after Chetan Baboor (silver in 1997, bronze in 2000). On Saturday, Manika faces Japan’s

Mima Ito, the Tokyo Olympics bronze medallist ranked fifth in the world, and irrespective of the outcome will fight for a medal later in the day.

The other women’s last-four clash is between players ranked 4th and 6th. At world No 44, Manika is the odd one out but it reflects the damage she can inflict when she dishes out an aggressive game on the table to go with her unique rubber on the racquet.

Which has been on show over the last two days at the Asian Cup, and which was largely missing at the World Team Table Tennis Championships and Commonwealth Games (CWG) earlier this year. In the former, she was blown away by Chen 11-7, 11-9, 11-3 during the Indian team’s ouster by Chinese Taipei. At the latter, she was stretched to five games by a Malaysian player ranked outside 500 in an overall lacklustre outing.

What’s changed? “Those flatter forehand smashes—what we call flat kills,” said S Raman, who was coach of the Indian contingent at both the CWG and team worlds. “After the World Championships, we had a chat and I suggested to her that she should go for balls that come higher than her waist—smash them rather than use the top spin. That has always been her strength, being so tall.”

HT FILE Manika Batra.