WTT Contender Muscat 2022 | Archana Kamath and Sreeja Akula make it to women's singles main draw

03/02/2022

Archana Kamath and Sreeja Akula battled through three rounds of the WTT Contender Muscat 2022 preliminaries to qualify for the women's singles main draw on Tuesday. They will compete alongside world No. 49 Manika Batra, the only Indian to qualify for the women's singles main draw.

At the Sultan Qaboos Sports Complex in Muscat, Oman, Archana Kamath defeated Ozge Yilmaz of Turkey 3-1 (11-8, 5-11, 12-10, 11-7), while Sreeja Akula defeated Huijing Yang of China 3-2 (3-11, 11-7, 12-10, 9-11, 12-10). Sreeja Akula qualified for the women's doubles after winning both preliminary rounds with her partner Selena Selvakumar, in addition to qualifying in singles.

Meanwhile, Kamath had already qualified for the main draw in the women's and mixed doubles events.

Kamath and Batra will compete in the women's doubles. On Wednesday, the duo will face Leila Imre and Mercedes Nagyvaradi of Hungary, who won the WTT title in Lasko last year. Kamath will be paired with Manav Thakkar in the mixed doubles, after losing in the final preliminary round of the men's singles earlier in the day.

Sutirtha Mukherjee and Anthony Amalraj, who were members of the gold-medal-winning women's and men's teams at the Commonwealth Games 2018, lost in their single’s preliminary rounds. Mukherjee, on the other hand, will compete in the women's doubles. In the main draw, she will compete with Ayhika Mukherjee and will face Melanie Diaz and Adriana Diaz of Puerto Rico in their first match.

Diya Chitale and the women's doubles team of Suhana Saini and Yashaswini Ghorpade were among the Indians who faltered after making it to the final round of the preliminaries. In the men's and women's singles, respectively, Tokyo Olympians G Sathiyan and Manika Batra will begin their campaigns against Lin Shidong of China and Lin Ye of Singapore on Wednesday.

In the mixed doubles, G Sathyan and Manika Batra will also team-up. When they won the mixed doubles title at WTT Contender Budapest in August last year, they became the first Indian players to win a WTT event.

MAIN DRAW

Men's Singles: Sathiyan Gnanasekaran

Women's Singles: Manika Batra, Sreeja Akula, Archana Kamath

Men's Doubles: Sathiyan Gnanasekaran and Harmeet Desai, Manush Shah and Manav Thakkar

Women's Doubles: Manika Batra and Archana Kamath, Sreeja Akula and Selena Selvakumar, Sutirtha Mukerjee, and Ayhika Mukherjee

Mixed Doubles: Sathiyan Gnanasekaran and Manika Batra, Manav Thakkar and Archana Kamath