New Delhi: In a year where she became the first Indian paddler to reach Round of 16 at the Olympics, beat a former world champion and world No.2 en route a run to her maiden quarter-finals at Saudi Smash, and entered history books as the first Indian table tennis player to reach the final eight in a WTT Champions event, Manika Batra is rather modest in her appraisal.

“It’s been quite a balanced year,” she says. “I have had some good wins and some bad losses. I would say reaching the third round at Paris Olympics was a highlight and I really savoured the win over world No.2 Wang Manyu. But I am certainly not done or satisfied. I always aim higher.”

That means Batra has set her sights on a top-15 place for next year. Currently ranked 25th, two places behind Sreeja Akula who is the best-placed Indian woman in the world, the 29-year-old feels she has the game to consistently beat the world’s best.

“Top-15 is a realistic target considering the belief and game I have. This year has given me the confidence to consistently beat higher-ranked players. I am excited to enter the new Olympic cycle in this mindspace,” Batra, who earlier this year became the first Indian woman paddler to break into the top-25, says.

Post Paris, while most athletes decided to take a break from training to recalibrate their season, Batra got sick of home comforts pretty soon. “I had planned to spend some time with my family, but I began feeling the itch to return to training after a week. I really enjoy my training and am not a big believer in taking long breaks since they disrupt the rhythm. If you want to beat the top-10 players, you have to be very disciplined with your physical, mental, and technical training.”

A significant career move after the Olympics was her decision to part ways with G Sathiyan after three years of playing together in mixed doubles. Batra will now partner world No.60 Manav Thakkar in the new season. The duo had their first international outing at the Asian Championships in October where they lost their second-round match to Singapore’s Ser Lin Qian and Yew En Koen Pang.

“I don’t think we had enough practice as a pair going into that tournament,” Batra recalled. “I haven’t had the time and opportunity to fully understand Manav’s game yet but if we are to win medals and beat good pairs, we’ll have to put in a lot of practice hours together.”

“We couldn’t go far at the Asian Championships but I realised we were able to feed balls to each other when required. So, that’s a good start, but we will have to find a way to train together,” added Batra who trains in Hyderabad and Mumbai. Thakkar’s training, meanwhile, is spread across Chennai, Surat, and Germany.

In terms of her own game, Batra’s focus in the coming season will be to test some technical tweaks, something she could not do this year owing to the busy season. Along with her coach Aman Balgu, Batra plans to reassess her game when they resume training this month.

“Me and my coach Aman had identified some areas but we didn’t have enough time to train because of back-to-back events in 2024. I plan to go back to the drawing board and try those little technical changes. We also have the World Championships next year and one of my targets will be to bring home a medal,” she says.

While Batra has decided to give the ongoing mixed team World Cup in Chengdu a miss, she will be part of Ma Long-led Team Asian as the sole Indian player at the Waldner’s Cup later this month (December 13-15). The tournament, which honours the legacy of table tennis legend Jan-Ove Waldner, will be held in Oslo, Norway, and will feature a showdown between the finest players from Asia and the world.

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