Tokyo Olympics: Sutirtha Mukherjee outclasses Sweden's Linda Bergstorm, moves on to the next round

World No. 98 Sutirtha Mukherjee made her Olympic debut against a higher ranked Swedish Linda Bergstorm. She put up an impressive performance to knock out the Swede in a 7-game thriller. She won this thriller of a match, 11-5, 9-11, 13-11, 11-9, 3-11, 9-11, 5-11. Just after Manika Batra became the first Indian woman to win a table tennis singles match at the Olympics in 29 years, West Bengal’s Sutirtha Mukherjee wasted no time to join the club.

With coach Soumyadeep Roy on the sidelines, Sutirtha found inspiration and gave a steady competition to Bergstrom. Especially from the second game, after which there was no stopping the Bengal girl.

A HARD FOUGHT VICTORY FOR SUTIRTHA

Linda looked dominating from the start and closed out the first game in just 6 mins with a 11-5 win. Sutirtha never looked in control of the game and maybe that had to do with her unsettled nerves. She made too many errors on return and unforced errors made sure that Linda took a comfortable win in the first game.

But Sutirtha wasn’t letting it go so easily, she fought back hard and made Linda think. What a comeback in the second set taking a 8-3 lead before Linda made a comeback. The scores were reading 9-8 in favour of the Indian. She held onto her nerves and eventually took the second game 11-9.

Linda seemed to have been trusting her slices. In the third set she won 4 out of her 8 points through her slices. Sutirtha made a remarkable comeback winning 4 straight points to level the scores at 9-all but eventually losing the game 9-11.

A 4-1 lead in the sixth game gave Linda a lot of confidence as she looked to close out the match with this game. But, Sutirtha wasn’t having it. She once again made a strong comeback winning 6 points on the trot. It was a see-saw battle between the two paddlers who didn’t give each other much. Both looked determined to clinch a victory. Finally, after some amazing display of skills, the Indian paddler emerged victorious in the 6th game and took the match to the deciding game with the games tied at 3-3.

The deciding game didn’t seem to be going in favour of the Swede and you could see the frustration quite evident. The Indian was leading 5-1 at the time and looked set to win the match after an impressive performance. She dealt the final blow to the Swedish’s chances when she displayed an array of strokes and took the match with a 11-5 win in the last game. She now moves into the 2nd round and surely this win will boost up her confidence going deep into the games.