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Little champ
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Ch. S.S.V. Ramana goes far and wide excelling in the game
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Photo: C.V. Subrahmanyam
Budding champ Ramana in action
Don’t be misled by the chubby looks of Chakkirala Swamynatha Sree Venkata Ramana. He may be the cute child most of the time, but put him before a table tennis table, with a racquet in hand and he gets transformed.
The 13-year-old set out in ping pong when he was just seven. Under the tutelage of coaches Tata Rao, Achyut Kumar, Ashoka and Kiran, the teenager made rapid strides. He also came under the influence of coaches Krishnan, Suren, Nagender Reddy, Ibrahim Khan and M. Venugopal. Just two years after he started, he claimed the under 10 and 12 boys crowns of the St. Paul’s Academy, Anandnagar and Ranga Reddy district-hosted state ranking tournaments. Seeing his promise, he was elevated as captain of the AP cadet boys team in 2004 for the sub-junior Nationals at Chennai. In the same year, he took part in the zonal competitions at Kolkata and Bangalore. His hunger for titles grew in 2005 as he won the Protsaha Ugadi Puraskar for sports, the under 12 championships in the St. Paul’s School, the St. Paul’s Academy, the Anandnagar Welfare Association tournaments in Hyderabad, the Satyam Memorial in Vijayawada and the Stag AP championships at Visakhapatnam. Setting his sights higher, he entered the under 14 competitions, emerging runner up in various tournaments at Hyderabad, Vijayawada, Guntur and Vizag.
In the sub-junior Nationals at Puducherry in December that year, he defeated a top Tamil Nadu player in the second round, Vinod of Petroleum Sports Promotion Board in the round of 16, Assam No. 1 Navjyot in the quarter-finals and Anubhav Kundu, Bengal’s No. 1 in the semis. By now the state championships had become a cakewalk, as he picked up one title after another. His talent having become quite obvious, Ramana was selected for a training programme in China in August 2006, where he took part in the Taiyuan junior international tournament. A team bronze medallist there, he finished sixth in the individual competition. He led the state to the sub-junior Nationals at Alleppey and was also selected for the junior Nationals in Cuttack. More international acclaim was in store for him. Picked for the Fajr international junior, cadet and mini-cadet championships in Quazvin City, Iran, he claimed an individual silver and a bronze each in the team and doubles events. Competing in the under-17 years category, he has acquitted himself well, reaching the quarter-finals of several national level tournaments. His table tennis travels this year have taken him to places far and wide, such as Gandhidham, Indore, Baroda and Chennai. Ramana has carved for himself a place among the top eight players of the country. He adores Ma Lin of China, Schlager of Austria and Timo Bol of Germany.
A. JOSEPH ANTONY
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