Tokyo Paralympics: Deepa Malik salutes 'Silver Girl' Bhavina Patel for creating history

The Paralympic Committee of India (PCI) chief Deepa Malik has come forward and congratulated Bhavina Patel on clinching a historic silver medal in the Tokyo Paralympics 2020 Women's Singles table tennis Class 4 category final on Sunday. Bhavina finished second-best after losing to China's Zhou Ying in the gold medal match on Sunday.

Tokyo Paralympics 2020: Deepa Malik lauds Bhavina Patel on bringing home silver 

"It's absolutely stunning to see Bhavina Patel's performance- the way she has played the competition, it has absolutely stunned the opponents. Her game, her skills, her patience, coming back, the way she has kept her focus, it's beyond words, it's world-class. And this the skill, and this is the calmness that has made her achieve a feat of a silver at the Paralympics". said Deepa Malik while interacting in a video posted on her official Twitter handle.

"And our silver girl has given this gift to the nation on the National Sports Day. I think it's the aptest day to create history for any sportsperson in the country. Congratulations to Bhavina Patel and we are very very happy. On behalf of the Paralympic Committee of India, I congratulate her, and on a personal level, I  feel it's like passing on the baton. I always wanted women participation to come forward and a woman and that too on a wheelchair to win more medals for the country so that we can create inclusivity, shatter these stereotypes, taboos around the disability and Bhavina has just done that", the 2016 Rio Paralympics silver medalist added.

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Meanwhile, legendary athlete PT Usha also came forward and gave a special mention to Bhavina Patel as well. Taking to the micro-blogging site, the track & field legend expressed her best wishes to everyone on National Sports Day on Sunday and then congratulated the Indian Para table tennis player Bhavina Patel on winning the silver medal in the ongoing Tokyo Paralympics 2020 Games. At the same time, PT Usha also mentioned that this is India's first-ever Table Tennis medal either at the Olympics or the Paralympics.

Tokyo Paralympics 2020: Bhavina Patel wins silver

Coming back to the gold medal match, both the contestants were evenly matched when the game started but it was Zhou Ying who marched ahead and even though Patel did make a comeback towards the end, it was too late as the Chinese paddler won the first game 1-0 with 11-7 margin.

Nonetheless. Bhavina looked to keep her hopes alive with a dominant performance in the second game where she went down 5-11 which meant that she had to win the third game in order to keep her gold medal dreams alive.  The star Indian paddler looked to dominate but Ying was too good for her and in the end, clinched the gold medal with a 3-0 scoreline.