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The Hindu
27-07-2025
- Sport
- The Hindu
Former racer J.D. Madan in top gear as para table tennis player
In the early and mid-2000s, J. D. Madan was a hugely scintillating star on the car racing circuit, revelling in the intense pressure at the Irungattukottai track in Sriperumbudur during the National racing championships. Madan was destined for bigger things when he became the National champion in the Esteem car section at the age of 26 in 2003. But tragedy put paid to that possibility. He met with a near-fatal road accident in 2007 in Mumbai that turned his life upside down. He was paralysed waist down. Not one to be cowed down by circumstances, Madan soon found purpose in life. In early 2021, Madan started playing table tennis, and as a veritable sportsperson found success in it as well. He went on to win medals in National para table tennis tournaments and is now ranked No.2 in India in Class I (wheelchair athlete). Recently, he won multiple medals in ITTF events in Taipei (Future) and Kaohsiung (Challenger). In Kaohsiung, he won silver. Madan is happy that para table tennis is growing in India, but feels it still has a long way to go. Para TT in India, according to the 48-year-old, is growing but not yet at the international level. 'We have only Bhavina Patel and Sonalben Patel at the international level. Our grassroots structure is quite good, it is growing,' he says. The difference between top countries and India who do well in para TT is the absence of a strong programme and exposure. 'Countries such as Korea, Japan and Thailand have a very strong programme for para table tennis. Actually, it's like a job. They give them a salary. They practice everyday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the National Training Centre. We have a long way to go,' says Madan. Table Tennis Federation of India said Madan is making good efforts at providing the best for its paddlers. 'They are taking players internationally twice a year minimum,' he says. A resident of Alwarpet, Madan loves the security the neighbourhood provides, but rues the complete absence of space for pedestrians. Madan is not just a champion paddler. He has been active in ensuring the lives of differently abled persons change for the better. He was part of an NGO called Disability Rights Alliance that has completed big projects with Chennai Corporation. 'One project that we associated was the beach (wooden) pathway for differently abled persons and for every other user on Marina and Besant Nagar Beaches,' he said. On and off the sports field, Madan continues to make an impactful change.
Indian Express
02-07-2025
- Sport
- Indian Express
Father's foresight, TT robot behind Divyanshi taking down three Chinese on way to Asian title
It was during the Covid pandemic in 2020 that Divyanshi Bhowmick's father decided to bring a TT table home, hoping his daughter would take the interest in the sport she had shown at school to possibly something more significant. That has turned out to be a worthwhile investment as Divyanshi defeated three Chinese players on the way to winning India's first gold medal in 36 years at the Asian Youth Table Tennis Championships. India last won a gold medal at the Under-15 event in 1989, when the tournament was held in New Delhi. On Tuesday in Tashkent, the paddler from Kandivali in Mumbai defeated China's Zhu Qihi 4-2 in the final to continue her rapid rise in the sport. The gold medal comes a few months after Divyanshi was thrown at the deep end in Chennai, where she made her senior debut at the WTT Star Contender event at the age of 14. In the first round, she defeated World No.64 and Olympian Giorgia Piccolin of Italy. She has also won a doubles silver medal at the 2023 ITTF World Youth Championships, along with WTT Contender Youth titles at U13, U15 and U17 categories. 'It's a very important performance. She has beaten three Chinese players and the player whom she beat in the semifinals (Liu Ziling), had beaten her three times before,' says multiple-time former national champion Kamlesh Mehta, who is now the general secretary of the Table Tennis Federation of India (TTFI). 'That player is very strong and also very comfortable with the style of play, the rubber that Bhowmick plays with. That itself speaks volume about her achievement.' Divyanshi's rise (she's ranked 3rd in the world in U15, 14th in U17 and 24th in U19) in the sport started during the lockdown when her father decided to bring a TT table home. Soon she was playing for 4-5 hours everyday with her sister and father. But at her first Nationals, Divyanshi lost early, prompting her father to try and find out what went wrong. He was told that it would take 3-4 years for his daughter to reach an elite level. 'When she lost in qualifying, I asked the coach how we could get better. I was told that it would take a long time and things don't move so fast. I couldn't digest this and took matters in my own hands,' says Rahul Bhowmick. Rahul, who is the regional CEO of ISS Global Forwarding, decided to bring a Power Pong Omega Robot home to help develop Divyanshi's game. 'One of the things that I noticed in the success of Chinese paddlers was their ball control. So, we used the robot to work on specific scenarios where she was having trouble. You can program the robot to a high-spin, high-loop setting and then hit a thousand of such balls in practice. The key was to repeat it time and again until she perfected it,' says Rahul. The very next year, Divyanshi would win the 2021 Nationals. She also benefited from not working full-time under one coach, but shuttling between three different ones to work on different aspects of her game. As if that wasn't enough, her father started sending her to international WTT events hoping that her growth would be accelerated in an environment which included the best players. When the age-group titles started coming, so did the call to be part of the Indian team in 2022. In 2023, the doubles silver at the World Youth Championship followed. 'When we first put her on the international circuit in 2022-23, we must have spent lakhs making her play six tournaments abroad. There were travel and equipment costs with no sponsors. In India, parents have to outlay a lot of funds initially till you become a player in the national set-up,' says Rahul. Late in 2024, Divyanshi was signed up by Dani Sports Foundation, who had been scouting her and some other youth table tennis players since their U13 days. 'A lot of times what happens in the Indian ecosystem is that they play a lot of junior events. At U15 and U19 level, they keep on playing youth events. Our idea is to get some exposure internationally in senior events as well. It's okay if you lose in the first round but understand the psyche of the elite players while you are still a growing youth star,' says Ekansh Gupta, CEO of Ultimate Table Tennis and an advisor at Dani Sports Foundation. At the Asian Youth Championships, that step up to the senior level seemed to have worked in the Indian's favour. Seeded second for the tournament, Divyanshi's crowning moment came when she defeated Liu in a seven-game thriller in the semifinal. Her father said that the win came after India's foreign coach Massimo Costantini strategized with them on how to take down the Chinese paddler. 'Massimo has helped her tremendously at the national camps. He adds value to her coaching. For this Asian Championship, he has been continuously practising with her, giving her inputs and settings for her matches,' adds Rahul.
News18
31-05-2025
- Sport
- News18
UTT Season 6: Sathiyan And Diya Lead Dabang Delhi To 11-4 Win Over Patriots
Sathiyan, participating in his sixth consecutive season with Dabang Delhi, started strong by defeating Jeet Chandra 3-0 in Match 4, Game 2, ensuring a tie win for Delhi. Diya, this season's highest-valued Indian player, followed with a solid 2-1 win over World No. 43 Britt Eerland, showcasing a strong performance by the Season 2 champions. Organized by the Table Tennis Federation of India (TTFI) and promoted by Niraj Bajaj and Vita Dani, the IndianOil UTT continues to expand as a premier professional league. All 23 ties will be held over 16 days at Ahmedabad's EKA Arena, with tickets available exclusively on BookMyShow. UTT Season 6 kicked off with an exciting match between USA's three-time Olympian Kanak Jha and Singapore's 19-year-old Izaac Quek. Despite Kanak's higher ranking and strong start, Izaac secured a 2-1 victory for Dabang Delhi with powerful backhand smashes. Jaipur's Sreeja Akula made a comeback against Maria Xiao, overcoming an initial seven-point deficit to win 2-1 with the season's first Golden Point. In mixed doubles, the new pairing of Sathiyan and Maria clicked immediately, winning 11-6, 11-10, 11-6 for Delhi. Building on this momentum, Sathiyan and Diya Chitale clinched the final two matches, securing a dominant victory for Delhi. Sathiyan was awarded the Indian Player of the Tie for his clean sweep over Jeet, while Maria received both the Foreign Player of the Tie and Shot of the Tie awards. Earlier, in the Dream UTT Juniors, both Maharashtra teams secured narrow 5-4 wins. U Mumba TT narrowly defeated Stanley's Chennai Lions with key victories from Prateek Tulsani and Ananya Muralidharan, while PBG Pune Jaguars triumphed over Kolkata ThunderBlades with a strong doubles performance by Atharva Nawarange and Tushti Sood. Izaac Quek bt. Kanak Jha 2-1 (5-11, 11-5, 11-9) Maria Xiao lost to Sreeja Akula 1-2 (11-4, 9-11, 10-11) Sathiyan Gnanasekaran/Maria Xiao bt. Kanak Jha/Sreeja Akula 3-0 (11-6, 11-10, 11-6) Sathiyan Gnanasekaran bt. Jeet Chandra 3-0 (11-6, 11-7, 11-6) Diya Chitale bt. Britt Eerland 2-1 (11-8, 11-7, 8-11)
The Hindu
13-05-2025
- Sport
- The Hindu
Shouldering the hopes of India's mixed doubles revolution in TT — Manush and Diya's big dreams, bigger responsibilities
Indian table tennis has always focused largely on singles. From Achanta Sharath Kamal and G. Sathiyan to Manika Batra, individuals have broken through on the biggest stage to give the sport's identity some muscle in the country. However, the event roster for the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics has moved the spotlight on doubles with the introduction of the mixed team event in the sport. Though the International Table Tennis Federation is yet to formalise the format of the mixed team event, there would likely be five matches in a fixture: a mixed doubles match, followed by women's singles, men's singles, women's doubles, and men's doubles. India's gains in the doubles vertical over the last few years are encouraging. The pair of Ayhika Mukherjee and Sutirtha Mukherjee bagged two historic bronze medals at the 2023 Hangzhou Asian Games and the Asian Championships in 2024. In the men's event, Manush Shah (ranked 75th in singles) and Manav Thakkar, ranked No. 9 in the world, have been registering key wins. The mixed pairing of Manush and Diya Chitale, ranked 11th in the world, and Diya's partnership with Yashaswini Ghorpade, ranked 19th in the women's doubles event, has also been a shot in the arm for the current crop. This is the first time in a little over a decade that two Indian pairs — Manav and Manush (eighth) and Manush and Diya (ninth) — have been seeded in the World Championships, scheduled to be held in Doha from May 17 to 25. The time, therefore, is right for the Table Tennis Federation of India to widen its horizons. Balancing act Diya, fresh from a triumphant mixed doubles campaign in the WTT Contender in Tunis, is now eager to divide her energies among all three events – women's singles, doubles (with Yasashwini), and mixed doubles (with Manush). 'I think every category has equal importance now. It's not that singles are more important than doubles or vice versa. India has the best chance to win a medal at the Olympics in the mixed doubles event because we are doing very well in it. I'm sure many would agree,' Diya told The Hindu. 'In table tennis, everyone plays everything. Now, the mixed team has been introduced. Every event is important to me. My goal is to make it to the mixed doubles quarterfinals at the World Championships,' the reigning National singles champion added. That said, Diya is aware that her strongest event, and the best chance to register solid performances in major events, is in the mixed doubles category with Manush. This partnership began in October 2023, and the duo has been consistent, reaching four semifinals and four quarterfinals in the last one and a half years. 'We linked up in 2023 and entered the quarterfinals in the very first tournament we entered together – the WTT Contender in Muscat, the same year. Over time, our bonding has gotten much stronger,' Diya added. Manush puts the pair's success down to similar playing styles and the use of plain rubbers. 'Both of us are aggressive players. That was the main reason we came together for the category. It was also the main reason why we thought we could be a prospect at the international level. That apart, the serve and receive games of Diya and I are quite complementary to each other,' Manush chimed in. 'We both cheer each other up a lot. I feel that if one of us is not playing so well, the other steps up and tries to help. So that's working well,' Diya added. A fixture that exemplified this synergy was their triumph over Japan's Sora Matsushima and Miwa Harimoto in the final in Tunis. This is a pairing the Indians had lost to earlier in the event's Doha chapter. 'It was the first time that we reached the final of a Contender event. We had played many semifinals before, but we always lost to a few of the top pairs. But I think the pair that we played in the finals in Tunis, we had lost to them earlier this year in the quarterfinals in January,' Diya explained. A turning point for the duo came at the Singapore Smash this year, as they managed to take the fight to some of the top pairs in the sport. 'The Singapore Smash in 2025, where we made it to the quarterfinals, improved our profile. That was the biggest points haul we have accumulated till now,' Manush added. Bridging the gap The 24-year-old, the reigning men's Senior National champion, from Vadodara identified training with left-handed foreign paddlers as a way to develop further. 'To step up our game, we need to practice more with foreign players who are better than us and who are stronger than us as a pair. We would be looking at this year, along with our [India's] head coach, Massimo (Costantini), to find some good sparring partners. (We need) Especially the left-handed ones, because India doesn't have so many left-handed players. That's a major concern for us, but it's something we are trying to solve.' 'Every pair ahead of us in the world ranking has one left-hander and one right-hander. We, as Indians, are not used to taking on high-quality left-handed players. For example, in the WTT Star Contender Chennai in March this year, we lost to the Korean pair of Lim Jonghoon (left-hander) and Shin Yubin (right) in the semifinals. We lost in straight games. The gap between us and the Koreans was wider than we expected at this stage. It was because of a lack of practice against left-handers,' reasoned Manush. This duo has multiple goal posts between the shorter target of the World Championships later this month and the Asian Games next year. A week-long camp in Bengaluru is the first pitstop where some fine-tuning will be done and valuable practice time clocked. 'The goal is to play better as a pair and improve the quality of the game. So, we will take it step by step. We will face tougher pairs in the earlier rounds of the Worlds before going into the quarterfinals. The ultimate goal is to win a medal,' Manush declared. 'We are preparing hard at the coaching camp in Bengaluru, and we couldn't have asked for a better preparatory ground for the World Championships as our confidence is high after the triumph in the WTT Contender Tunis, and there are no tournaments before the Worlds,' the pair said. Diya gears up for her first singles and mixed doubles campaign at this level, having represented India previously in two World Team Championships. Manush is headed to his second World Championships in the individuals, with two World Team campaigns under his belt. Should things fall in place for the duo, they hope to break into the top eight rankings by the year's end.
