Manika Batra is an Indian table tennis player who won gold medal in singles table tennis at the 2018 Commonwealth Games. She is the top-ranked female table tennis player in India and ranked 58th in the world as of April 2018.
Early Life of Manika Batra
Manika Batra is an Indian table tennis player born on 15th June 1995. She is the youngest in her family who belongs from Naraina Vihar, Delhi. Manika Batra began to play table tennis at the age of four. Manika Batra studied at the Jesus and Mary College for a year before dropping out to concentrate on table tennis. The elder sister of Manika Batra, Anchal also played table tennis from Delhi and had an influence on her during her early playing career. When she was 16, she rejected a scholarship to train at the Peter Karlsson Academy in Sweden.
Career of Manika Batra
Manika Batra won the silver medal in the under-21 category of the Chile Open in 2011. She represented India at the 2014 Commonwealth Games at Glasgow as well as the 2014 Asian Games. She won three medals at the 2015 Commonwealth Table Tennis Championships winning silver in the women`s team event as well as the women`s doubles event and bronze in the women`s singles event.
Manika Batra won three gold medals at the 2016 South Asian Games, winning the women`s doubles event (with Puja Sahasrabudhe), mixed doubles event (with Anthony Amalraj) and women`s team event (with Mouma Das and Shamini Kumaresan). She qualified for the women`s singles event of the 2016 Summer Olympics. She then led the Indian women`s table tennis team to the gold medal in the final against four-time gold medallists and defending champions Singapore at the 2018 Commonwealth Games in Gold Coast, Australia. She defeated world number 4 Feng Tianwei as well as Zhou Yihan in the final. She and Mouma Das won India`s maiden silver medal in the women`s doubles category at the 2018 Commonwealth Games. She became 1st Indian woman to bag a commonwealth table tennis individual gold medal in Commonwealth Games 2018 by beating Yu Mengyu of Singapore.
