Table Tennis Star Manika Batra Alleges National Coach Asked Her To "Concede Match" During Olympic Qualifiers

In her response to TTFI, Indian table tennis star Manika Batra has reportedly accused national coach Soumyadeep Roy of pressurising her to lose a match during the Olympic qualifiers.

Table tennis star Manika Batra has alleged that national coach Soumyadeep Roy asked her to throw a match during the Olympic qualifiers in March and that was the main reason she refused his help in the singles competition of the Tokyo Games. Responding to Table Tennis Federation of India's show cause notice, Manika strongly denied that she brought disrepute to the game by refusing Roy's help. According to TTFI sources, the world number 56 stated she would not have been able to focus on her match if someone who asked her to indulge in match-fixing months earlier was sitting by her side. "Besides the need to avoid disturbance due to his last minute intervention, there was an additional and much more serious reason behind my preference to play without the national coach," the Khel Ratna awardee alleged in her response to TTFI secretary Arun Banerjee. "The national coach had pressurised me during the qualification tournament in Doha in March 2021 to concede my match to his student to enable her to qualify for Olympics - in short- to indulge in match-fixing," she said.