How fighting above their weight forges table tennis champions

Hyderabad: Faking age was the bane of Indian sports for decades. Older players competed in lower age groups, demoralising the younger ones if not destroying their games and careers. It was no wonder that India fared poorly at the Olympics and other international sporting events, simply because the best would have fallen by the wayside.

In contrast, sports powerhouses, such as China, encouraged younger players to lock horns with their senior counterparts, especially in table tennis. The striplings would initially be nervous or overawed by their famous opponents. Over time, the younger crop would become fearless and come into their own.

A classic example is Chinese star Fan Zhendong. In the 2012 International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF) World Junior Championships at the Gachibowli indoor stadium right here in Hyderabad, Fan clinched the boys singles title, about a month short of his 15th birthday in the under 18 category !

Paluru Jalani

In less than two years, he was a member of the Chinese squad that clinched the 2014 Team World table tennis championship in Tokyo, the youngest ever at 17 years and 103 days. In his formative years, Fan would often spar with legends Ma Long and Ma Lin, the latter later to become his coach.

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Sure enough, the results were there for all to see. Till his retirement last year, the Chinese maestro had won a whopping 21 gold medals at the Olympics, World Championships and World Cups. It included the men’s singles crown at the 2024 Paris Summer Games.

Nearer home, one table tennis coach who consistently encourages paddlers to punch above their weight is Maduri Venugopal. Not surprisingly, many of his wards at the GSMTTA have quickly advanced, gaining from the confidence boosts that such face offs facilitate.

One such promising prospect to emerge is Kontham Shresta Reddy. After a treble of bronze medal finishes, the 18-year-old ascended to silver in the Lal Bahadur Stadium (LBS) state ranking meet and then to gold in the GSM Telangana State ranking league championships, all these achievements coming in the under 19 section.

Shresta Reddy

To avoid burnout from the sport, Venu encourages his pupils to relax and unwind away from the table. Shresta, a first-year civil engineering student at CBIT, sets aside her racquet, which has a Gorilla surface for defence and a soft attacking rubber for offence, to sketch, watch movies or listen to music.

Hardandhi Sanjeev Kumar Nikhita clinched gold in the Little Flower High School (LFHS) and LBS state ranking table tennis tournaments and silver in the GSM and Mahaveer championships. But the St. Joseph’s Degree and PG College student aimed higher to reach the women’s semifinals and secured the third place in the above-mentioned under 19 league.

Kompally Tarun Kedarnath

Kompally Tarun Kedarnath grabbed two titles in the LFHS and Mahaveer state ranking table tennis tournament, was placed third in the GSM and Table Tennis For Life (TTFL) championships, all these feats coming in the under 19 set. The 18-year-old made a splash in the TTFL men’s singles where he finished runner-up.

Paluru Jalani settled for silver in the under 17 league, the TTFL and under 19 tournaments. In the CISCE Nationals at Bhopal, she claimed the under 19 singles bronze and was a member of the title winning team. The 16-year old from Nasr School, Khairatabad cooks, paints, dances and listens to music to recharge herself.

A Joseph Antony, author of ‘My way—The biography of M.L. Jaisimha’ (Apple Books, Kindle, +91-9490040831) was a sports commentator for Sony TV and a Senior Assistant Editor with The Hindu.

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