"The trick to playing second fiddle," said opera singer Robert Breault, "is to play it like second Stradivarius." While few aspire to be second-best, the position is an inevitable effect of numerical rankings. In India, a nation fast rising in international table tennis, those holding the top spots are unlikely to suffer from complacency. Pictured here are the top four players in the nation of nearly 1.4 billion people, from left to right: Sharath Kamal Achanta (world ranking #32), Sathiyan Gnanasekaran (WR #38), Manika Batra (WR #62) and Sutirtha Mukherjee (WR #98). Today in Doha, Qatar, all four continued their Olympic-obsessed odysseys at the Asian Olympic Qualification Tournament (AOQT). The tournament represented a last chance for the Indian squad, having come up short both collectively, at the 2020 ITTF World Team Qualification in Gondomar, Portugal, and individually at the recently concluded World Singles Qualification Tournament, also conveniently located in Doha. The AOQT was designed to ensure participation from each of five geographical divisions in Asia. A wild card selection would also be awarded to the highest-ranked second-place finisher, resulting in Olympic berths for six women and six men. Achanta and Batra entered the tournament as the top seeds, not only in the South Asia regional qualifier but the entire AOQT. Batra ascended to the lonely perch when former top seed Suthasini Sawettabut of Thailandobviated singles play in the AOQT via the World Singles Olympic Games Qualification Tournament Wednesday. Thus, Achanta and Batra only needed to secure second-place finishes to advance. Batra and Sutirtha Mukherjee constituted the entirety of the South Asian women's group. Therefore, owing to Sawettabut's withdrawal from singles, Batra was assured qualification either by a win or by her top seeding. Mukherjee, on the other hand, enjoyed no such luxury as the third seed. Needing a win to guarantee an invite to Tokyo, Mukherjee controlled her own destiny with a (7-11, 11-7, 11-4, 4-11, 11-5, 11-4) win over Batra. While Batra may have backed in to the Olympics singles, she still has a chance to win her way in to the newly added mixed doubles event. She and her countryman Achanta play in today's semifinals against Lin Ye and Pang Yew En Koen of Singapore. In the men's South Asia group, Achanta and fast-rising domestic rival Sathiyan Gnanasekaran played a round robin with Pakistan's Muhammad Rameez. Gnanasekaran defied the prescribed order by winning the group, sweeping Rameez and upsetting Achanta in a seven-game thriller. "It was a good match against Sathiyan but I made some errors and he capitalized on them to win the match," reflected Achanta, India's all-time men's singles champion who was denied his tenth title this February when Gnanasekaran won his first. Owing to the selection procedure, all the top-seeded Achanta needed to do to secure a spot in his fourth Olympics was avoid a colossal upset to world #695 Muhammad Rameez. Achanta punched his ticket with an (11-4, 11-1, 11-5, 11-4) win over his South Asian neighbor. "I was a bit nervous before playing against Rameez as I had never faced him before," said Achanta. "It's a huge sigh of relief, especially the way this year has been. Though this will be my fourth Olympics, it will be my best Olympic Games." While often maligned, the role of the proverbial second fiddle is both time-honored and essential. Every up-and-comer must play second fiddle en route to the top, as Achanta did under Indian legends like S. Raman. Thus, the competition for first chair invariably strengthens the national team. As composer Leonard Bernstein aptly observed, "If we have no second fiddle, we have no harmony." In the hands of Sutirtha Mukherjee and Sathiyan Gnanasekaran, the second paddle sounds like a Stradivarius.

More at ESPN