New Delhi: For star Indian paddler Manika Batra, her second Olympic appearance at Tokyo 202o was an event of agony.
It gave her a reality check that a sportsperson’s life won’t always be on upward trajectory. Perhaps losing to Austria’s Sofia Polcanova in the third round of women’s singles wouldn’t have shattered her confidence but the series of events that would follow after the quadrennial event did break her rhythm.
Manika alleged that Soumyadeep Roy, the national coach for India’s table tennis contingent at Tokyo Games, had asked her to throw a match against Sutirtha Mukherjee, who was a student from the coach’s personal academy in Kolkata. As a matter of protest, Manika didn’t avail Roy’s services for her women’s singles matches near the court, though Roy was present during her mixed doubles games alongside Sharath Kamal.
What ensued was a tussle between Manika and the Table Tennis Federation of India (TFFI) when the national board issued a show-cause notice to the player for refusing to take Roy’s assistance at the Tokyo Games. Soon, it developed into a long-standing battle between the two parties, dragging it to the Indian court.
Manika was left out of the Asian Championships squad, the federation pointed out that she skipped the national camp, the player alleging that the selection at national camp was conducted in an unfair manner. It was all set to be scripted into an ugly episode in India’s TT history until the Delhi High Court ruled in the player’s favour in February 2022. The federation was disbanded and replaced with an ad-hoc panel and the coach was suspended.
Though legally Manika won the battle, her mojo wasn’t the same with the racket. In her debut Commonwealth Games in 2018, Batra won four medals, including women’s singles gold. The Delhi-based paddler couldn’t even come closer in the next edition in Birmingham, having lost the quarterfinals of all four events she featured in – women’s singles, women’s doubles, mixed doubles, and women’s team events.
Manika Batra changes coach to regain form
A medal-less campaign at the CWG 2022 led to parting ways with her German coach Chris Pfeiffer and Manika eventually shifted her base from Mumbai to Hyderabad. Though she qualified for Paris 2024, she isn’t the top-ranked Indian women in singles. Telangana’s Sreeja Akula displaced her to be India’s No.1 paddler at 25 earlier this year.
Will Manika get away from her past? Or will the ghost of Tokyo 2020 again haunt her? News9 Sports caught up with Aman Balgu, who started coaching Manika since October 2022. The Mumbai-born former Indian national player has seen the journey of the 29-year-old player in the last 20 months and believes that the series of unwanted events have made her ward stronger than ever.
“It’s been a long time like four years. But to be honest nobody is off their past. Everyone remembers everything. Everyone has it on their back of their minds but that is a part of a sportsperson’s life. Controversies, political interference, and other things. A sportsperson has to go through it. I am sure at the back off her mind she has that thing but that’s how you become strong,” Balgu said in an interview from Saarbrucken in Germany.
It isn’t that Manika regained her mojo overnight after joining forces with Balgu. It was a learning process for the coach himself as he never trained a top-ranked player at his academy in Hyderabad. The first preference for Balgu was to create an environment for the Commonwealth and Asian Games medallist was to avoid external disturbances.
In their stint, Manika won a bronze medal at 2022 Asian Cup, became the first Indian singles player to make it to the quarter-final of Asian Games, broke into the top 5 rankings in mixed doubles, stunned World No.2 Chinese player Wang Manyu in Saudi Smash 2024, and attained career-high ranking of 24 in May.
It was her run to the quarter-final of Saudi Smash that led to a quantum leap in her rankings, only two months before the Paris Olympics, where she will lead a three-member Indian squad in their maiden appearance in the women’s team event.
Speaking about the resurgence of Manika, Balgu said: “We did not start preparing today or tomorrow. It started a year ago. Whatever we are trying like the experiments… we’ve done that in other tournaments. Some things did work and some didn’t. Now I think she is in good shape and hopefully she can repeat what she did in Saudi.”
Manika has broken into the top-30 rankings but her current coach doesn’t agree with the thought of a player obsessing over ranking at the cost of development.
“It is still an number and it doesn’t change even if she becomes 10th ranking. It looks good for her personal glory and media. For everyone it sounds nice but when you play a match it doesn’t count. It never counts,” Aman noted.
“Numbers give you an idea whether you are progressing or not. It gives you idea but not the actual picture. I have seen players who play very well but their rankings is not justified. If you focus a lot on numbers it might help you but not for the longer run.
“It becomes too stressful because you care too much about the numbers, and then you forget about focusing on development,” he added.
Manika missed spot for Paris in a category where she was ranked in top 10
Manika and G Sathiyan reached the World No.5 ranking in mixed doubles in November 2022, becoming the first Indian mixed doubles pair to be listed so high. The duo was dubbed to be one of the medal contenders at Paris as mixed doubles is the only doubles event played at the quadrennial showpiece.
However, a massive drop in form by the pair coupled with first-round exits led to their downfall. Manika and Sathiyan missed the Olympics spot by two places, stuck at the 18th spot in the qualification pathway for all mixed doubles pairs.
Manika would have time to introspect on the failure to qualify for mixed doubles, but for the time being, she must concentrate on women’s singles and women’s team events to boost India’s elusive medal hopes at Olympics.
“Manika is a wonder girl. She is a player with huge amounts of guts and she can beat anyone because she is in that level. The way she is training right now, I am sure in Olympics she will be playing some amazing table tennis because she is putting the hard work and is focused,” said TTFI’s assistant coach Sourav Chakraborty, who is supervising the Indian contingent in Germany under head coach Massimo Costantini.
For Balgu, it is within his regular routine of keeping her ward away from all the disturbances rather than enhancing her skills just a week before the Olympics.
“My first goal is to make sure she has a happy environment around her because Manika is someone who believes in positivity, who likes only positivity and can’t negativity at all. As a mentor or coach, I have to ensure she has a friendly environment where she doesn’t suffer from external stress and no extra information to put it very simply,” Balgu concluded.
For star Indian paddler Manika Batra, her second Olympic appearance at Tokyo 202o was an event of agony. Sports Sports News: Latest Cricket News, Cricket Live Score, Sports Breaking News from Sports Today
