PANAJI: Facing Manika Batra last week at the Ultimate Table Tennis was a dream in itself for teenage prodigy Syndrela Das. Beating her? It came with a flurry of good feelings along with the realisation of how time just flashed past the Goa Challengers prodigy.
After beating the ‘golden girl of Indian table tennis,' Syndrela was taken to a trip down memory lane. “After the match, my father Supriyo sent me the photo which was taken eight years ago and I felt, ‘wow, time really goes fast,” she told this daily on Tuesday. Facing someone who you have once admired on the TV screen at home comes with a lot of nerves. For Syndrela, it settled once she entered the table to face Manika of Ahmedabad APL Pipers.
“I played the second singles’ match and my team was already leading 3-0 so the pressure was on me if I can extend it or I lose it, so I felt the nerves before the game. But once I entered the arena and I started playing, All those thoughts went away and I gave my best, enjoyed it and it turned out in my favour,” she said.
While she is enjoying a blockbuster of a year, one person she dearly misses is her uncle, the Maradona of India, Krishanu Dey. Dey, who played for both Mohun Bagan and East Bengal FC as an attacking midfielder was called Maradona for his dribbling and goal scoring abilities. He passed away in 2003, six years before Syndrela was born.
“When I got to know about him for the first time, I was so happy but also sad at the same time because I really wanted to see him. I thought that had he been around, he would have been a mentor to me because he's my family after all and I could learn so many things from him,” she explained. The memory of him, from the tales her father and grandfather narrate to her, will forever live on. “They tell me stories about him and how he was and I'm sure he would be proud of me now where I am," she added.
While she continues to dominate age-group meets nationally and internationally as a 16-year-old, there was a time where she exited tournaments early. She began playing table tennis aged eight in Kolkata, and joined Soumyadeep Roy’s academy, a year later. “I went to his academy only after I got to know that he opened up the academy thanks to UTT. I used to practice every day, have fun and then I played tournaments,” she said. Then came the reality check. “I used to lose like a whole year. I was losing either in the second round or third round,” she said.
To make matters worse, Syndrela suffered an injury to her right wrist after COVID in 2021. “I got hurt during practice, I got sad that I couldn’t play any more tournaments. I missed out on the National Ranking tournament, for which I was eligible, because of the injury,” she said. But she never budged. The teenager returned with more vigour. As soon as her wrist healed, she took part in the first national ranking tournament, and went on to win it.
Successes followed but the teenager did not get her big break yet. Last year, she went unsold in the UTT auction, which also acted as another source of motivation. This year, she took the table by storm, completing a rare double (U17 and U19 women’s singles titles) in the UTT Inter-State Junior and Youth National Table Tennis Championships in Dehradun in April this year.
But little she knew about what was to come after this. In last month’s WTT Star Contender event in Slovenia, the message in Syndrela’s inbox would turn out to be a life-changer. “I was scrolling through the phone and coach sir sent me the official mail and when I saw my name on the squad I was extremely happy. I called my mom and dad. I felt ‘yes, finally my hard work paid off this year,’” she said.
There’s more opportunity to make things better, too. Syndrela and Goa Challengers are frontrunners to win the UTT title, as they have qualified to the semifinals unscathed. Win that, and Syndrela’s UTT career will have the highest of highs, not long after getting unsold.
