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New sheen to Sharath’s game
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TABLE TENNIS National champion Sharath Kamal is poised to prove his mettle in the international arena
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IMPROVED SKILLS Sharath Kamal
Sharath Kamal is in the best frame of mind and his game too is on a high thanks to the training and International competitions he has had in Spain. The current National champion knows there couldn’t be a better time to take his game to a new le
vel, a peak which his Indian counterparts can only dream of scaling. And reach his avowed goal of making it into the top 50 (he is ranked 79 in the world, at present) by the end of the year.
Every time Sharath was tipped to win the National championship singles title, he has either stumbled badly on the way or has given the audience nightmares before managing to script a win. After winning his maiden title in Gurgaon in 2002-03, he lost to S. Raman in the quarterfinals in the 2003-04 edition at Panchetti and in 2004-05, he lost to Subhajit Saha in the final in Jaipur. And in 2005-06, he justified his international status by winning the singles title in Ajmer and his third title now at Siliguri.
As G. Jagannath, a former National champion said, for strange reasons, he has not played with much motivation, in India. This is his third title when it should, in fact, been his sixth.
The statements by Sharath at a media conference that he had not prepared much for the Nationals and that it was more of match practice could have perturbed a casual observer. But those who have followed his career for the last half-a-decade would have been not been perturbed. The self-imposed pressure has done him in on quite a few occasions. This time in the National championship held at Siliguri recently, it was a new Sharath one saw. He played with a freedom generally associated with a rookie. He lost only one game at the most in the matches he played either in the team or the singles event. This is the Sharath one wants to see more of in the coming years.
The World championship in China and the Olympic qualifier in Hong Kong will be a good ground to test his improved skills.
A happy trend
The Table Tennis Federation of India has given the top players a list of 10 international tournaments, out of which they can choose the events they want to play. Sharath said this was a happy trend where players can make their own choice unlike in the past. He feels he has a decent chance of qualifying for the Beijing Olympics through the Asian quota. On Belarus Aleksey Yefremov, the new coach for the Indian team, Sharath said he found him interesting. He felt the team had a bright future under Yefremov who will train the boys till the 2010 Commonwealth Games in New Delhi.
His stint at San Sebastian, a first division club in Spain, has done him wonders. If he could cause upsets in the Pro-Tours and improve his ranking, the country will to look at the champion with greater expectation.
K. KEERTHIVASAN
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Metro Plus
Bangalore
Chennai
Coimbatore
Delhi
Hyderabad
Kochi
Madurai
Mangalore
Puducherry
Tiruchirapalli
Thiruvananthapuram
Vijayawada
Visakhapatnam
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