WTTTC 2026 London Coach Massimo outfoxed by coach Gao Jun. India richly deserved to lose

[Sohana]

In women's team event knock-out stage round of 32 , it seems to me like USA team Coach Gao Jun correctly calculated that India would play Dia Chitale at #3 position.
Coach Gao Jun not only cleverly protected Lily Zhang, who is notoriously weak against pips but playing Lily against Dia assured USA a win.
Looks like Coach Gao Jun correctly calculated that Indi would play in form Yashaswini & Manika at #1 # and #2 and that is automatic 2 losses for USA if Lily had played at USA #1 or #2 position given Lily's weakness against pips

It has been said that Dia is good against domestic competition but weak internationally.
So it is no surprise that Lily won easily

Sally played very well to earn two wins

But imagine if India had played wily experience pips player Sutirtha instead of Dia against Lily. Probably an easy win for Sutirtha over Lily & in the 5th match Yashaswini would have beaten Jessica

Congratulations for USA for well deserved win especially Sally
But since India seems more obsessed with optics of looking good with a two winged looper (Dia) , they fully deserved to lose

[J.F.Patel]

Any combination of Manika, Yahaswini & Sutirtha with any player at any position would have resulted in India win.
I guess that is the price you pay for pips bigotry & looking good on TV using two winged loopers
I don't think Coach Massimo may be fully to blame but I wonder there may be lot of pressure from TTFI to play at least one two winged looper to look pretty on TV

[Yadhev Guptha]

I see no issue with Dia (or Sindrela) being selected to play in individual events like WITTC if here rakning is high enough.
But team events like WTTTC is more about team strategy & synergy
India failed miserably in their team selection.
The correct team assuming Sreeja was not available would have been
1. Manika Batra
2. Yashaswini Ghorpade
3. Ayhika Mukherjee
4. Sutirtha Mukherjee
5. Divyanshi Bhowmick

This should make it total nightmare for any team to play India. It becomes a pick your poison situation.

If you keep selecting C list two winged loopers like Diya for team events, even B list European loopers will have you for breakfast , lunch & dinner
Forget A list Asian loopers like China, Japan and Korea

[Sohana]

Actually Ukraine also made the correct choice to play chopper Tetyana Bilenko against Lily Zhang
But Lily played really well and won. I guess Lily is only more weaker against at the table slim pips blockers than against away from the table choppers LOL . But keep in mind that Tetyana is 42 to be running around like a headless chicken
There is a video on Facebook of Lily struggling against even older chopper USATT CEO Virginia Sung in practice
Anyway USA still lost because Sally lost one of the two. This confirms my theory that American & Indian (or any non-far-east Asian) two winged loopers are still third or fourth class compared to European two winged loopers who are second class compared to Far East Asian loopers (China, Korea & Japan)

[J.F.Patel]

India seems more obsessed with optics of looking good with a two winged looper (Dia) , they fully deserved to lose

India teams both men & women are horrible anyway at the world level. Men are even worse with 5 third or fourth level loopers who are a joke against European 2 wing loopers and far east Asian loopers.
Sharat Kamal improved his backhand later in his career & Harmeet Desai is decent but rest are basically shakehander mimicking traditional penholders LOL . No backhand

Indian government should not allow TTFI to even fund the WTTTC though It is fully OK to go for Asian Championships etc.

Unless they are ranked at least #8 in team tournaments, Indian Government should not allow TTFI to send team to Word level events
Money better spent for other sports like badminton , hockey etc
This is a national disgrace of 1.4 billion people with Sathiyan losing to technically weak players like Andreas Levenko etc OMG

I read somewhere that New Zealand does not send their players to even Olympics even if they qualify unless they are medal contenders

[Hegde1998]

India teams both men & women are horrible

The only way to fix this is for Government of India to step in .
TTFI is an ongoing comedy show anyway, the latest being the Kamlesh Mehta fiasco

Indian Government should mandate TTFI to mandate that all domestic team events must have at least 1 slim (long) pips players and 1 wide pips player on a five player team not just women but also men (I am not saying individual tournaments).

This would promote true diversity in the sport and also Indian men would not embarrass them on the world stage

BK Arunkumar was the last Indian national level male chopper and that was before the 1998 Durban Aspect Ratio Reduction chopper massacre