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Sharath, Manika working out shorter training stints
Sharath Kamal and Manika Batra managed to get together for a short five-day training stint in Chennai last week to focus solely on mixed doubles with less than three months to go for the Tokyo Olympics.
Despite an unrelenting second wave of the coronavirus pandemic in the country and state-specific lockdowns forcing them to rework logistics, Sharath Kamal and Manika Batra managed to get together for a short five-day training stint in Chennai last week to focus solely on mixed doubles with less than three months to go for the Tokyo Olympics.
Initially, the plan was for Sharath to fly from Chennai to Pune—where Batra trains—for the practice sessions. But with Pune going into partial lockdown at the start of the month which turned into a stricter lockdown in Maharashtra in mid-April, that plan had to be shelved. Last weekend, the two took the impromptu decision to shift base to Chennai instead. “After Pune went into lockdown, we spoke and Manika said I’ll come to Chennai. We decided about it just three days before she flew down because we wanted to keep track of the situation,” Sharath, who resides in Chennai, said.
The duo had two daily sessions at the Nehru Stadium’s table tennis hall from Tuesday to Saturday, after which Batra immediately flew back. Incidentally, on Saturday, the Tamil Nadu government announced its own lockdown on Sunday with more stringent curbs from Monday. “The timing was lucky,” Sharath said.
With no national camps or international tournaments in immediate sight and Sharath (Chennai) and Batra (Pune) training in different cities, India’s lone mixed doubles pair for the Tokyo Games will have to make do with such short gigs together in these uncertain times again. “Whatever little we can do in this scenario will help, and we must use it. It was nice to be able to at least train together for a few days given the current situation,” the 38-year-old Sharath, who is set to make his fourth Olympic appearance in Tokyo, said.
India’s world No. 18 mixed doubles combo qualified for Tokyo by winning the Asian qualifiers last month in Doha after stunning the fifth-ranked Korean pair of Lee Sang-su and Jeon Ji-hei in the final. Sharath and the 25-year-old Batra will have to step up in Tokyo as one of the 16 pairs in the mixed doubles event, which the veteran paddler believes is the country’s best shot at a table tennis medal at the Olympics.
Getting together for the first time since winning the qualifying event, the two primarily focused on improving their coordination and footwork as a doubles team over the five days. “To understand that ‘OK, when I do this, you can do that, and vice-versa’. With both of us being tall, at times we tend to get caught up in the same line or at the same place. That was most important to look at. Tactically we will go into more specifics the next time we train together. This was more to have that coordination and understanding between each other and working on the larger aspects of mixed doubles,” Sharath said.
For that, they watched videos of their previous doubles matches and recreated those situations on the training table to improve their positioning. “We looked at situations where we constantly get caught in the same place and tried to figure out how to get out of it. A lot of analysis went into it, wherein we watched videos of our matches as well as of our practice sessions with a camera on,” Sharath said.
Both Sharath and Batra have also qualified in singles for the Olympics along with G Sathiyan and Sutirtha Mukhejee. For Sharath, the most pleasing part about their sessions in Chennai was that they could focus entirely on mixed doubles without having to extract time for it from their respective singles training. “Generally, when we’re preparing for mixed doubles before tournaments or even in camps, we also have to train for our singles. This time we didn’t have to worry about our singles training. It was really good to practice just as a pair,” Sharath said.
And spend precious time together away from the table to build on their doubles camaraderie with an age gap of 13 years between them. “In doubles, that aspect is equally important. And the week here was quite productive because we could also spend some quality time together. You just can’t go into tournaments, from match to match and keep playing. We also need to spend time together and talk about things,” Sharath said.
Sharath hopes to have similar week-long sessions at least once a month before they head for the Olympics. “Assuming that in June we get into a national camp, hopefully next month too we can get together to train for 5-6 days, depending on the situation, of course,” Sharath said.
