Sharath and Manika enter combined doubles closing, one win away from Olympic berth

The star Indian pair of Achanta Sharath Kamal and Manika Batra made their manner into the combined doubles closing of the Asian Olympic Qualification Tournament after defeating Singapore’s Koen Pang Yew En and Lin Ye 4-2 right here on Friday.
The world no 19 Indian pair has arrange a closing conflict towards world no 8 Korean duo of Sang-Su Lee and Jihee Jneon on Saturday and is now a win away from qualifying for the 2021 Tokyo Olympics.
Having already secured the singles berths on Thursday and aiming for a double qualification, Sharath and Manika confronted a troublesome problem within the preliminary a part of the match because the scores had been levelled at 2-2 after the fourth sport.
However, the 2018 Asian Games bronze medallist pair managed to carry an edge over their opponent and bagged two successive video games to finish a 12-10 Sep 11 11-5 5-11 11-8 13-11 victory in 50 minutes.
Meanwhile, the Korean duo of Lee and Jeon entered the ultimate with a 4-11 11-7 11-4 5-11 11-8 11-8 victory towards Thailand’s Padasak Tanviriyavechakul and Suthasini Sawettabut.
Earlier on Thursday, all of the 4 Indian paddlers Sharath, Manika, Gnanasekaran Sathiyan and Sutirtha Mukherjee earned themselves singles qualification berths on the Tokyo Olympics.
While Sathiyan and Sutirtha emerged winners of their respective classes of the South Asian Group, Sharath and Manika sealed Tokyo berths by advantage of being the highest-ranked second-placed gamers.