India’s table tennis star Manika Batra defeated World No 32 Margaryta Pesotska to reach the women’s singles third round. After losing the first two games, Batra made a comeback to prevail 4-11, 4-11, 11-7, 12-10, 8-11, 11-5, 11-7 in a second-round match that lasted 57 minutes.

Batra will face Austria’s Sofia Polcanova on Monday for a place in the round of 16. Like her first-round match, she did not want the national coach in her corner on Sunday but her personal coach Sanmay Paranjape was seen in the gallery.

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The World No 62, after losing the first two games, was trailing in the third too but managed to claw her way back. She used the pimple rubber to good effect and combined it with a more offensive approach. The match saw long rallies, slow as well as fast ones, as Manika twiddled with her bat amazingly to find forehand and backhand winners.

The sixth game which she won after trailing 2-5 turned the tide in her favour decisively. The timeout worked as she reeled off nine points in a row to give herself five game points before levelling the match at 3-3.

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With momentum in her side, Manika controlled the deciding game and sealed the match with a forehand cross court winner. Earlier, world number 38 Sathiyan had a commanding 3-1 lead but lost four games in a row to lose 3-4 to lower-ranked Lam from Hong Kong.

In the other game, India’s 26th seed G Sathiyan succumbed to the pressure on his Olympic debut to exit the men’s singles competition. He was defeated by World No 94 Hong Kong’s Siu Hang Lam in his second-round match after getting a first-round bye. 

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“It is heartbreaking but I will come back stronger. I was playing really well initially. I was aggressive and serving well but after the fourth game he started to slow down the pace and started receiving better,” Sathian told PTI.

“The rallies got longer and I started to feel the pressure. I was a little bit passive from the fifth game onwards. I should have continued being aggressive despite his variation in pace. I just made the error of playing it safe.

“Credit to him also. He did not make much mistakes in the last two games,” Sathiyan added.

Sathiyan raced to a 5-1 lead in the third game in a dominating fashion and kept going strong as Lam’s game fell apart and in no time and Sathiyan had a 2-1 lead in his pocket.

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But there was a twist in the tale with Lam drawing parity by taking the next two games. Sathiyan saved two game points in the sixth game to keep Lam under pressure but made an error on the third game point.

In the deciding game, Lam opened up a 5-2 lead with a crushing forehand winner after a time out.

Lam completed the upset win when Sathiyan made a backhand error.

For someone who thrives on fast and long rallies, Sathiyan felt he was not aggressive enough after taking a 3-1 lead in the match while his opponent raising his game.