'India has achieved more in the last 6 years, than in the previous 60': S Raman

Indian table tennis has been on a remarkable rise since 2018 and in its latest advent, India has won three bronze medals at the recently concluded Asian Table Tennis Championships held in Astana, Kazakhstan.

This is India's best performance at the Asian Championships, matching the three bronze medals they won back in 2021. But back then, the Chinese did not participate.

In 2024 however, with the participation of China, India has managed to win three medals which showcases the growth of the sport in India.

2024 Asian Championships- A review

The women's team won its first medal at the Asian Cships, winning a bronze, followed by the men's team, winning their third consecutive bronze medal at the Asian Championships.

The women's doubles pair of Ayhika Mukherjee and Sutirtha Mukherjee also won bronze, becoming the first Indian women's pair to win a medal at the Asian Championships.

Added to this, players like Manush Shah and Manav Thakkar gave some inspired performances in the men's singles.

This is not an aberration but another feather in the growth of Indian table tennis across six years.

Growth of Indian table tennis

To throw more light on the development of the sport, former Indian team head coach S. Raman joined The Bridge in an exclusive telephonic conversation.

"It started in 2018 when India won a few medals at the Commonwealth Games and then we also won a historic first-ever table tennis medal at the Asian Games in 2018," he said.

At the Commonwealth Games in 2018, India won eight medals in table tennis, including three gold medals.

That could be considered the starting point of India's upward trajectory in table tennis.

A little while later, India won two medals at the Asian Games, the first table tennis medals in this competition, with the men's team winning bronze and the mixed doubles pair of Sharath Kamal and Manika Batra winning bronze.

Following that, in the 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham, India won another seven medals with four golds (including one gold from para table tennis).

The Indians also won a bronze medal in the Hangzhou Asian Games in 2023, with women's doubles pair Ayhika and Sutirtha winning India's first medal in this category.

Since then, India has gone from strength to strength, and in 2024, India sent out its largest-ever table tennis contingent to the Paris Olympics.

In addition to that, the Indian men's and women's teams qualified for the Olympics for the first time.

At the Olympics, India's Manika Batra and Sreeja Akula became the first Indian paddlers to qualify for the round of 16 at the Olympics.

Raman believes there is a combination of several factors that have contributed to India's rise in table tennis across the years.

Aggregators and differentiators

According to Raman, there are two factors at play in Indian table tennis.

"There are two groups. The first one, I would call them aggregators. They comprise private sponsors, foundations, TTFI, SAI, various government schemes like TOPS, Khelo India, etc," he said.

"UTT (Ultimate Table Tennis) is another unique aggregator where foreign players come and play with Indians, which is a great opportunity and continues to be," he continued.

"The second group is the differentiators. This includes the players, who are the difference makers, bringing back laurels for the country. The other differentiator is the coach, who is like the anchor, helping the player achieve what he/she could achieve," he added.

While he was extremely gratuitous towards the federation and SAI for getting funding over the years and ensuring the funding kept increasing over time, he was also vocal about giving coaches their due recognition.

Role of Indian Coaches in table tennis' growth

"The fact remains that in the last six years, we have achieved more in table tennis than what we have done in the previous sixty years, and all of this has been achieved because of the Indian coaches who have been with the Indian team," said Raman.

India currently has a head coach in Massimo Costantini, who was reappointed in 2024 before the Olympics, but between his stepping down in 2018 and coming back in 2024, India did not have a head coach.

Rather, it was a bunch of Indian coaches who took up the role from time to time. Raman himself was the head coach for a little under a year between July 2022 and February 2023.

He quit citing a lack of proper national camps and inadequate funding, also saying he worked pro-bono in his seven-month tenure.

He alleged that the current Indian coaches are also working on a pro-bono basis and are not remunerated.

"When I was the national team coach, I put national interest above everything else and I worked for close to seven months. I did not get paid for it. I do not want to take credit away from the hard work done by several Indian coaches towards table tennis' growth. I am more of a statesman, speaking on their behalf," he said.

"I would go as far as to say based on data, these six years have been India's golden era in table tennis and the Indian coaches must be recognized since they have worked extremely hard as private coaches, personal coaches, and national coaches," he added.

He was also dismissive of the criticism levied upon the Indian paddlers and coaches for their lack of performance.

"Why is one having the feeling that the performances are not good enough? To people saying that, show me any other period where India has done better than the last five to six years, and let us put this conversation to rest," he asserted.

While it is indeed true that in many sporting disciplines, coaches are often overlooked in the successes of players, it seems even more so in the case of table tennis, where criticism is quicker to arrive during failures than praise during success.

With Indian table tennis climbing new heights, it is imperative that the coaches receive their fair share of recognition for their erstwhile contribution to the rise of the sport in India.