After CWG setback, Archana Kamath is ready to shine again

The 22-year-old from Bengaluru was left out of the CWG squad due to a muddled selection criteria but she's found a way to move past that.

Somewhat silently lost in the collective clangour of court cases around the selection of India’s table tennis contingent for the 2022 Commonwealth Games (CWG) was the elation-turned-anguish of Archana Kamath.

Indian table tennis player Archana Kamath (Twitter)

Back in June last year, the 22-year-old from Bengaluru was the India No. 2 in singles in the international World Table Tennis (WTT) charts and in the top five in doubles with Manika Batra. The Committee of Administrators, looking after the affairs of the national federation at that point, had included Archana in the original women’s squad.

However, its muddled and flip-flopping selection criteria—it also gave a certain weightage to domestic performance and rankings—saw Diya Chitale, who was named as the standby, replace Archana after the former had moved the court over her exclusion. The Kamath family also took the legal route in the hope of getting the decision reversed, but the High Court of Karnataka refused to intervene.

The standby drafted in, Archana had been dropped altogether, her CWG dream vanishing into thin air in a manner of days.

“Yeah, that was hard,” the soft-spoken Archana said. “You have no other option but to look forward. But as an athlete, you also want to make use of every opportunity and every chance that you get to play the prestigious tournaments. So the thought that I have a lot of years still ahead of me was not really convincing.

“But, what's done is done. It's in the past. You have to move on. And I tried my best to move on from that.”

On Wednesday at the WTT Star Contender Goa, Archana and Manika, currently ranked sixth in the WTT doubles charts, staged a spirited turnaround to defeat the Hong Kong combo of Li Ching Wan and Zhu Chengzhu 3-2 (8-11, 9-11, 11-5, 11-6, 12-10) in the women's doubles Round of 16.

Archana’s mind is in a much better space now than it was eight months ago when the in-and-out tale would eat her up mentally. Aided by her sports psychologist, Shaantanu Kulkarni, and her ophthalmologist parents, Girish and Anuradha, the youngster gradually regained her hunger for the sport.

“My parents are my rock and always have been for me, both as a person and an athlete. I was lucky to have them to fall back on. And also my sports psychologist. Having a good support system around was one of the main factors of me moving on from that episode," she said.

Archana has been working with her sports psychologist for the last couple of years, opening up to him on conversations about “pretty much everything, there's no real constraint as such”. In August however, two months after her CWG exclusion, she shifted her training base from the Padukone-Dravid Centre in Bengaluru to the Anshul Garg Academy (ACA) in Noida under coach Anshul Garg and strength and conditioning coach Jai Sanan. The training, fitness and coaching methods slightly differ at her new setup, but the major factor for Archana, who finished fourth at the 2018 Youth Olympic Games, is the wider pool of sparring partners.

“Each coach has his or her own style. I had a quite good setup back in Bengaluru. But I felt like moving to an academy gave me a lot of sparring partners to train with," she said.

Training with her doubles partner though remains a luxury, for Manika trains elsewhere and their tournament and travel schedules seldom combine. “But we do try and make the most of the opportunities when we get together. We also tend to discuss our games before and after our matches," Archana said.

When they do play together on the WTT tour they can form a potent pair, like their world ranking and WTT Lasko Contender title triumph in 2021 show. Manika, the star paddler and India’s top-ranked in singles currently, may carry that aura around her but the young Archana simply loves the company of her senior pro, which translates on to their on-table chemistry.

“One big advantage is that I'm very comfortable just being around her. In general, I think she is a very positive girl. So that helps me a lot too. Over time, she has also played a lot of matches against top players, so she also guides me many times.

“We have a good understanding, and that grows with every match that we play together. We understand our games well and how coordinated we are. I just hope it gets better and better from here," Archana said.