Young Indian table tennis player Manav Thakkar created history as he won the ITTF Challenge plus Benex Virgo North American Open title in the under-21 category. Second seed Manav defeated Argentina’s Martin Bentancor 11–3, 11–5, 11–6 in a one-sided match in the final at the ITTF Challenge Plus Benemax-Virgo North American Open that was held in Markham, Canada.
Manav is the first Indian to win this title since 2017. This was India’s first U-21 men’s singles title since the ITTF Challenge Series became an entity in January 2017, as opposed to being an integral part of the ITTF World Tour.
Nineteen-year-old Manav is the fourth Indian to win the men’s singles title in the ITTF World Tour Under-21 category. He has joined the likes of, Harmeet Desai, Gunasekaran Sathiyan and Soumyajit Ghosh who have won titles before him. Harmeet and Sathiyan had claimed the title in the same year in 2012. Harmeet had won the title on in Brazil and while Sathiyan took the honours in Egypt. A year earlier in 2011 Soumyajit had his claim to fame in Chile.
Canada for the first time has hosted an ITTF Challenge Series and World Tour tournament. Manav, who was also part of the Indian team that won Bronze medal at the 2018 Jakarta Asian Games, beat Argentina’s Horacio Cifuentes 11-5, 11-9 in the quarter-finals, before outsmarting Lorenzo Santiago 12-10, 7-11, 11-6 in the semi-finals to book a place in the finals.
The Rajkot born paddler created history by becoming the first Indian to be crowned World No 1 in the sport in the under-18 category last year.
