WTT Star Contender: Indian paddlers Manika Batra and Sathiyan Gnanasekaran through to semis

Top Indian paddler duo of Manika Batra and Sathiyan Gnanasekaran stormed into the mixed doubles semi-finals at the ongoing 2022 WTT Star Contender in Budapest.

The Indian duo pulled off a convincing straight sets 3-0 victory against Spanish duo Maria Xiao and Alvaro Robles in the quarter-finals on Thursday (Jul 14). Earlier, Manika and Sathiyan defeated Asar/Helmy of Egypt in straight sets 3-0 (11-8, 11-7, 11-6) to enter the mixed doubles quarter-finals.

The Indian paddlers have fine-tuned their performances at WTT Star Contender Budapest ahead of the 2022 Commonwealth Games.

The rest of the Indian paddlers, however, were not up to the mark. Earlier, both Sathiyan and Sharath Kamal went down in their respective men's singles round of 32 matches.

Sathiyan Gnanasekaran (35) lost to ninth-seeded German Dimitrij Ovtcharov 0-3 (5-11, 10-12, 8-11). Meanwhile, Achanta Sharath Kamal also lost against eighth-seeded Darko Jorgic (SLO) by 3-0 (10-12, 7-11, 11-13).

The World No. 4 duo of Manika Batra and Archana Kamath also failed to get the better of the Taiwanese duo of Cheng Hsien-Tzu and Liu Hsing-Yin.

Apart from Manika and Sathiyan, all the other Indian paddlers have exited the tournament.

WTT Star Contender 2022: Semi-final fixtures

Sathiyan Gnanasekaran and Manika Batra will take on the World No. 4 and 2021 World Championships silver medal-winning Japanese pair of Tomokazu Harimoto and Hina Hayata in the WTT Star Contender semi-finals in Budapest on Friday (July 15).

Date: July 15 Timings: 8:15 pm IST

For the first time, the mixed doubles semi-finals of the WTT Star Contender Budapest 2022 will be streamed live on Sathiyan Gnanasekaran's Facebook page. Catch the action live at 20.15 IST.