Table tennis has always been a part of the Indian sporting circuit, although on several occasions it has been overshadowed by other sports. In the last few years, though, Indian paddlers have been seeing renewed incentives to invest – both in terms of time and money – in the sport professionally.

This has, thus, not only helped the players get recognition for their efforts, but it has also helped further the growth of the sport in the country.

Trying to understand this acceleration in development of table tennis and its players in India, and its scope, The Field caught up with national coach Arup Basak. A former national champion himself, Basak outlined several contributing factors leading to more Indian paddlers rising to the higher ranking rungs in the sport.

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“Before, we weren’t getting the opportunity to play tournaments abroad,” he said. “Now, we are getting the chance and in our main [men’s] team, within the last five years, we have at least three players inside the top-100.”

According to Basak, these opportunities have been made possible because of the commitment of the Table Tennis Federation of India towards enriching Indian presence globally.

In this context, the 44-year-old also included the initiation of the Ultimate Table Tennis league as a viable channel of development of talent of the Indian paddlers as it brought them face-to-face with their global counterparts. Not only in terms of organising an international league-based tournament in the country, but also in terms of exposure to varied styles of play.

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No problem in game

“There has never been any problem in our game,” said Basak, before drawing attention to the commonly-held perception that Indian paddlers lack the skill-set that their overseas rivals possess. “The problem, however, was in our ball-matching [with the foreign players]. European players play far [from the table] and have a power game, while the Chinese players have quick reflexes. We use a mix of spin and speed in our game.”

Employing the latter, then, is not without its advantages as Basak elaborated, “You find that the world No 8 [Wong Chun Ting, who lost to the 110th-ranked G Sathiyan] is not able to win all the matches because he is not able to adapt [to different playing conditions]. The ball is different so he’s not able to play well. [But], our advantage is better, [because] Indian table tennis players can adapt to any kind of playing conditions.”

Even as Indian players boast of the ability to modulate their tactical strength to the varied conditions across different tournaments, they now also have a chance to see their ranking improve considerably in the new season. Starting in January 2018, the International Table Tennis Federation is overhauling its current ranking system.

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Basak said that the new system will help Indians a lot as it would do away with the complications of the previous ranking calculation method. “Before, it used to be that only if a player played and won against a big player, we used to get ranking points. Now, under the new system, a player will get points out of every round.”

Simultaneously, Basak also clarified that Indian paddlers needed to play more number of tournaments each season in order to make the most of this change.

“But we will have to play [more] tournaments,” he said. “Before, we used to skip playing tournaments because once the player used to get the ranking, the player could skip playing events for two-to-three months and be ensured of retaining that ranking. [So], now Indian players will have to play more than 12-13 tournaments every year. Otherwise, there will be problems in our performances.”

This conclusively brought the subject back round to the support proffered by the TTFI in ensuring that its players didn’t lose out competitively. As Basak then pointed out, “The TTFI is sending players to international tournaments and is also organising international tournaments in India regularly, so our upcoming generation of table tennis players will benefit [from these changes].”