Sreeja Akula | |
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Personal information | |
Nationality | Indian |
Born | Hyderabad, India [1] | 31 July 1998
Medal record |
Sreeja Akula (born 31 July 1998) [2] is an Indian table tennis player. She is a two-time Indian national champion. She is currently ranked India number one in women's singles. [3]
Sreeja hails from Hyderabad. Both her father Praveen Kumar, a manager in a private insurance company, and elder sister Ravali are table tennis players. [4] Ravali played at the university level. Sreeja trained under coach Somnath Ghosh, [5] at his academy at Kukatpally, Hyderabad. Before that she learnt the basics at St Paul’s Academy in Basheer Bagh when she was nine years and continued the game at YMCA in Narayanguda, [4] She passed her intermediate (plus two) with 98.7 per cent and then graduated in commerce. Telangana State Table Tennis Association (TSTTA) Secretary Nagendra Reddy was one of her first coaches. [4]
She won the women's singles and doubles table tennis titles at the 83rd Senior National and Inter-State Table Tennis Championships held in April 2022. [6] She was the runner-up in national Women's singles in the previous edition, losing to Manika Batra. She was also a part of the Indian team at the 2022 Commonwealth Games where she won gold medal in mixed doubles event with Sharath Kamal. [4] [7] She was the gold medalist in Women's Doubles and Women's Team events in Table tennis at the 2019 South Asian Games. [8]
In January 2024, she won her maiden international tournament at the WTT Feeder Corpus Christi in Texas. [7]
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