Utt academy

Tamil Nadu Physical Education: Young table tennis stars Tanishka Kalbhairav and Naisha Rewaskar registered convincing victories in their respective women’s singles matches to reach the final qualifying round of the World Table Tennis (WTT) Star Contender Chennai 2026, which kicked off at the Tamil Nadu Physical Education and Sports University in Chennai on Tuesday.

The 13-year-old Tanishka upset the experienced Maria Rony 3-1 (11-2, 8-11, 11-7, 11-4) in the second qualifying round while Naisha, who trains at the NSCI-UTT Academy in Mumbai, defeated wildcard entrant Palak Ghia 3-0 (11-3, 11-8, 11-6) to advance to the final qualifying round of the second edition of the WTT Star Contender Chennai, which boasts of an enhanced prize purse of USD 300,000.

Earlier, Gungun Sahu upset a much higher-ranked Hardee Patel 3-1 (12-10, 8-11, 11-9, 12-10) to move to the final round of qualifying.