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PROMISING CADETS Future table tennis stars Gayatri Girish

The little wonder from Alappuzha played a lead role as Kerala won its maiden cadet girls team bronze at the National Sub-junior and Cadet Championship in Chennai the other day.

And though the State lost to champion North Bengal in the semifinals, the 10-year-old gave a big scare to Bengal’s Oisaria Deb in her singles. Oisaria went on to finish runner-up in the open singles. Maria also played a close singles quarterfinal at the National.

After more than a decade of desperate searching, Kerala now appears to have found a player worthy of stepping into former national champion Ambika Radhika’s shoes.

Table tennis in Kerala seemed to go into a long slumber around a decade ago after the exit of Thiruvananthapuram’s Radhika and Kozhikode’s V. Sreenivasan – who made a sensational climb in the men’s rankings after moving to Chennai but now there is a revival of sorts.

Maria Rony

A little more than a year ago, Kerala upset Bengal on its way to the boys’ bronze at the Sub-junior National in Alappuzha with Sunder emerging as the hero then and now the Chennai medal, won by cadet girls Maria, Seraha Jacob, Gayatri Girish and Sivangi Raj augurs well for the sport.

Two training centers, the Alappuzha YMCA Table Tennis Academy and Kochi’s Regional Sports Centre, and the efforts of coaches Gladyson Correya, Bobby Joseph and B. Sudheendran, have played a big role in the sport’s happy comeback in the State.

“Maria is very talented, she could be a national champion if she retains her focus in the next few years,” says Gladyson Correya who had a hand in moulding her, at the Alappuzha Academy. “Her forehand attack and backhand counter are very good.”

Maria comes from a basketball family. Her father Rony Mathew is a university player and her uncle and grandfather were all basketballers of repute. She promises to be a tall girl too and her mobility is good. But she needs work her way through the homestretch maze.

A close scan of her matches against some of the country’s best reveals that she needs to work on her finish. The losses have been close, with the games often spilling over to extra points.

Sivangi Raj

“Even in the open singles quarterfinal, she had a 10-8 lead (against Karnataka’s Maitreyee Bailoor) in the third game but threw it away. She was nervous,” says Gladyson.

Gladyson is now guiding young talent at the Regional Sports Centre along with Sudheendran and finds Gayatri very promising among the cadets girls at the Kochi centre.

More exposure on the national circuit should help the promising cadets in the long run.

Kerala table tennis seems to have found its little stars of the future. With proper planning and exposure, we could relive the happy moments Radhika and Sreenivasan gave us all over again.

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