The historic feat at the Commonwealth Games in Gold Coast and the recent Asian Games performance has given India's table tennis poster girl Manika Batra a new height. She reached her career-best world rankings in the latest chart, released by the International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF) on Sunday.
Batra took to Twitter to share this moment with her fans:
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Manika Batra, who is an Asiad champion and Arjuna Awardee, climbed two spots to become World No. 53. Batra is the first Indian woman to win a singles gold at the Commonwealth Games. She improved on her previous best of 55 last month. "I am happy that today I have achieved best ranking of my career 53. I am aiming to improve it further by performing well in the upcoming tournaments. I am thankful to my coach," Batra tweeted.
At Gold Coast, after guiding the Indian women’s team to a historic gold, and claiming the women’s doubles silver in table tennis, Manika scripted history as the first Indian woman to bag the gold medal in table tennis singles final. She won each competition with grit and determination and became an overnight sensation. Manika also secured a women’s doubles silver alongside Mouma Das and mixed doubles bronze with G Sathiyan. She won four medals in the Commonwealth Games and two of them are gold. In the latest, the Delhi girl claimed the women’s title in the National Ranking tournament on July 10. She is the only Indian in the Top-100.
Manika has become Indian sports’ new poster girl and even PM Narendra Modi heaped praises on her.
In 2014, Manika had reached the quarterfinals at the Commonwealth Games. A year later, she helped India bag a team silver and women’s doubles silver in the Commonwealth Table Tennis Championship. She qualified for the 2016 Rio Olympics by winning the South Asia Group qualification tournament.
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