Tokyo Paralympics 2020: Bhavina Patel creates history, enters table tennis final

India’s Bhavina Patel creates history by entering the final of women’s singles table tennis Class 4 event at Tokyo Paralympics on Saturday morning. She will face China’s Yang Zhou in the gold medal match on Sunday.

The 34-year-old Indian, despite losing the first set, came back hard against the world number 3 China’s Zhang Miao to win the game 7-11, 11-7, 11-4, 9-11, 11-8 in the semifinal match. Earlier, she had defeated Borroslava Peric Rankovic of Serbia, who is also world number 5, in straight games 11-5, 11-6, 11-7 to enter into the historic semi-finals.

Bhavina became the first Indian table tennis player to enter into the semi-final and later into the final of a Paralympics.

The Class 4 category para-athletes have fair sitting balance and fully functional arms and hands, but their impairment may be due to a lower spinal-cord damage or cerebral palsy.