Sharath Kamal, the Commonwealth Games champion, and Manika Batra, India’s top women’s player, will lead the Indian table tennis team at the 2023 World Table Tennis Championships final in Durban, South Africa. The event will be streamed live. The Indian team consists of 11 players, with Kamal leading the five-man men’s team that includes Olympian Sathyan Gunanasekaran and members of the 2018 Asian Games bronze medal-winning team, Manav Takar and Harumit Desai. Manush Shah is also part of the team.
Gunanasekaran is India’s top-ranked men’s table tennis player, ranked 51st in the world, followed by Kamal, ranked 53rd globally. Apart from singles and men’s doubles, Gunanasekaran will partner with Batra in mixed doubles. This duo is ranked 5th in the world. India has only won two medals at the World Table Tennis Championships. The men’s singles team and SRG Sappia won bronze medals at the inaugural competition in 1926.
In the women’s category, Batra, ranked 39th globally, will compete in singles and pair up with Archana Kamas in women’s doubles. They are ranked 12th in the world. National champion Sreeja Akra, Olympians Stilta Mukherjee and Reese Tennyson will also participate in women’s singles.
The tournament will begin with round 128 for singles and round 64 for doubles, and it will end on May 28th. This is the first time the World Table Tennis Championships will be held on the African continent since the 1939 Games in Egypt.
The ITTF World Table Tennis Championships 2023 final will feature the following players: Sharath Kamal, Sathyan Gunanasekaran, Manush Shah, Harumit Desai (men’s singles); Manika Batra, Srija Akra, Stilta Mukherjee, Reese Tennison (women’s singles); Sharath Kamal/Sathyan Gunanasekaran, Harmeet Desai/Manush Shah (men’s doubles); Manika Batra/Archana Kamas, Sreeja Akra/Diya Chitale (women’s doubles); and Sathyan Gunanasekaran/Manika Batra, Manav Thakar/Archana Kamas (mixed doubles).
The live streaming of the Championship Final 2023 of the ITTF World Table Tennis Championships will be available on the ITTFWorld YouTube channel. The Indian TV channels that will provide live coverage of the World TT have not been confirmed yet.