CHENNAI: At the Olympics, not all results, especially in the earlier rounds, are equal. The record books may say players advanced to their respective third-round matches before bowing out but such a generic statement can lack context.
It’s why the performances of Manika Batra and Sreeja Akula, both of whom penned a slice of history by becoming the first paddlers from the country to feature in the pre-quarterfinals at the Summer Games, were, in its own way, path-breaking. Sure, they didn’t win any medals but away from the glare, a glass ceiling was quietly shattered.
Push back the curtain a bit and their performances at the Olympics wasn’t a one-off, merely a pit-stop in an upward curve. This year alone, all three of Manika, Ayhika Mukherjee and Sreeja — three of the country’s leading women’s paddlers — have beaten three different Chinese paddlers, all ranked within the world’s top five.
While Batra took down Wang Manyu, Mukherjee and Akula bested Sun Yingsha and Wang Yidi during the World Team Championships. At the Asian Games in 2023, Ayhika had paired with Suthirtha Mukherjee to beat the Chinese duo of Chen Meng and Yidi enroute a bronze.
To put some sort of perspective into these results, it’s a bit like three Indian tennis players downing Iga Swiatek, Aryna Sabalenka and Jasmine Paolini in the same year (or Carlos Alcaraz, Novak Djokovic and Daniil Medvedev). Even if the comparison may not hold much merit for obvious reasons, there will be a correlation in the gravity of the results.
Now, the challenge is to ensure these results don’t merely become footnotes, that they become building blocks towards something greater. It’s where a franchise tournament like the Ultimate Table Tennis (UTT) can have a big role to play. Batra, while speaking on the inauguration of the fifth edition of the league in Chennai on Wednesday, credited UTT with the rise of the women’s game in the country.
“Personally, it has helped me, because the players come for UTT from different countries, and we play against them, we play with them,” the World No. 25 said. “I can see the growth that’s happening, especially in women’s table tennis in India, how we all are performing internationally. We have improved a lot from UTT.”
While correlation need not imply causation, this goes beyond circumstantial evidence — the women’s team also advanced to the quarterfinals of the team at the Olympics (another first). A Sharath Kamal, who has perhaps played on every playable table in this country, sang from the same hymn sheet.
“This is the first time both Indian teams, men and women qualified for the Olympic Games in the team event,” he said. “The girls went further on; they went on to play in the quarterfinals in the team event, and especially Manika and Sreeja... performances like this have been constantly coming up, and India has been constantly growing in the international arena...”
Ayhika, World No. 90, did just that when she beat Yingsha in February for one of the biggest recent upsets in the sport’s history. “UTT has helped me a lot,” she said. “It has boosted my confidence.”
She was speaking for herself but this could well be on behalf of the women’s players who have felt a significant growth curve over the last few years.