On May 6, Beijing time, the 2024 WTT Saudi Arabia Grand Slam entered the third match day of the main event. In the women's singles 1/16 finals, the world's No. 2 Wang Manyu faced the "Indian First Sister" Batra.
The two sides have met 5 times before, Wang Manyu remains undefeated, and has adapted to the opponent's long rubber play, and has kept the opponent clean in the last two times. It may be precisely because of this that the pre-match preparation was slightly insufficient, which led to a little unpreparedness in the face of Batra's counterattack.
In this game, Wang Manyu easily won the first game 11-6, but in the second game, Batra knew that if she played step by step, she would definitely lose, so she took the initiative to seek changes and won many sideways attacks. Wang Manyu had a bit of luck, because the stability of Batra's forehand attack was not high before. But this time it was obviously a misjudgment, and Batra's attack hit extremely high, and he pulled one back 11-5.
In the crucial third game, Wang Manyu got off to a bad start and fell behind 1-5. In addition, Batra was lucky, scoring two dribbles to get the game point at 10-5, and finally won another game at 11-7. In the fourth game, Wang Manyu had no way back and made a perfect start of 4-0. But suddenly the form dropped, and the opponent beat an 8-1, resulting in a 5-8 down. Wang Manyu fought back, returned a wave of 5-0, and won the game point first 10-8. Batra was a little slack when she was ahead, but falling behind instead calmed her down. As a result, Wang Manyu lost 4 points in a row at the end of the game, and was reversed 10-12 in the fourth game, losing 1-3 and missing the top 16 of women's singles. Wang Manyu also became the second national table tennis player to be out of the tournament after Liang Jingkun.
Wang Manyu In this game, the tactics were not clear, and he always wanted to break through from the opponent's backhand, but seeing that Batra's forehand hit rate was also very high, he habitually changed to a backhand, but the opponent grabbed the opportunity to get the first shot. This is obviously a lack of preparation before the game, and a bit of a rush.
If this is just a loss of one game, it is nothing, but this game may determine whether Wang Manyu can be selected for the women's singles of the national table tennis Paris Olympics.
At this stage, Sun Yingsha's national table tennis Olympic points are as high as 27,650 points, and she has already locked a singles quota in advance. Since Wang Yidi was disqualified from the singles selection, only Wang Manyu and Chen Meng were left to compete for another women's singles spot. With Wang Manyu's outstanding performance this year, the Olympic points have surpassed Chen Meng, of which Wang Manyu is 14865 points, Chen Meng is 13310 points, and the difference between the two sides is only 1555 points. The deadline for Olympic points is May 14, which is the end of the WTT Saudi Grand Slam. With Wang Manyu stopping in the second round of the women's singles, and at the same time deducting 3,000 points because she lost the foreign war, there are only 11,865 Olympic points left.
The next initiative fell into the hands of Chen Meng. Chen Meng is now alone in the lower half of the women's singles, and as long as she does not lose the foreign battle, she can qualify for the women's singles at the Paris Olympics again. Of course, she is likely to face three Japanese Olympians in Paris, Miu Hirano, Miwa Haramoto, and Hina Hayata. If she can win it, then it makes sense for her to qualify for the Olympic singles eventually.
Do you think that the national table tennis Olympic points scheme is reasonable? Wang Manyu and Chen Meng, who can qualify for the Olympic singles in the end?