India have ended their WTT contender Muscat 2022 campaign with three new medals

India’s Sutirtha Mukherjee and Ayhika Mukherjee have won the women’s doubles silver medal after they lost 3-1 to China’s Zhang Rui and Kuai Man in the WTT Contender Muscat 2022 final at the Sultan Qaboos Sports Complex on Saturday.

The loss ended a phenomenal run for the Mukherjees at the Muscat meet. It saw them knock out Puerto Rican top seeds like Adriana and Melanie Diaz in the first round of the main draw and also overcome fellow Indians Sreeja Akula and Selena Selvakumar in the semi-finals.

Tokyo Olympian Sutirtha Mukherjee and Ayhika lost the opening game 11-6 but managed to hit back in the second one to level the score at 1-1.

Despite putting on a good fight, the Indian table tennis players lost the all-important third game 10-12, which shifted the momentum of the match towards the Chinese team.

China’s Zhang Rui and Kuai Man took an early lead in the fourth game and proceeded to wrap up the match 6-11, 11-8, 10-12, 7-11 along with the gold medal.

This meant that it was the end of the Indian contingent’s WTT Contender Muscat 2022 campaign with a total of three medals – all of which came in the doubles category.

Besides Sutirtha and Ayhika’s women’s doubles silver, Sreeja Akula and Selena Selvakumar won a bronze in the same event for reaching the semi-finals.

Archana Kamath and Manav Thakkar had clinched the mixed doubles silver on Friday.

Top Indian table tennis stars Manika Batra and Sathiyan Gnanasekaran, unfortunately, did not progress beyond the quarter-finals in any of their events.