‘After 8 CWG Medals, Indian TT Squad Confident of Asian Games Success’

World No. 46 Sathiyan Gnanasekaran bagged a team gold, a men's doubles silver (with Achanta Sharath Kamal) and a mixed doubles bronze (Manika Batra) at the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games recently. India’s highest-ranked table tennis player has now turned his focus to the Asian Games in Jakarta (August 18-September2) and the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

"With this confidence I think we can win a medal in the Asian Games,” Sathiyan told IANS. “That would be fantastic. Winning a medal in the Asian Games is as good as winning a medal in the Olympic Games." 

A medal in Jakarta would boost India’s Olympic chances in Tokyo, the 25-yer-old Chennai player said.

India bagged eight table tennis medals in Gold Coast, including three gold, two silver and three bronze in Gold Coast. That’s three more than what the country won at the Delhi CWG in 2010. The 2014 Glasgow Games was relatively ordinary with only Sharath managing a silver in the company of A. Amalraj in men's doubles.

The Indian squad had surpassed expectations in Gold Coast, Sathiyan said. "We did a great job. We were actually expecting a good performance. We surpassed our expectations. I should accept that," he said. "We have done really, really well. We wanted to equal our performance of 2010. We were looking forward for that and had our goals set. But I think we went beyond expectations, winning medals in all the events. This is phenomenal. We did better than what we thought we could."

Sathiyan said their show at the Commonwealth Games made people sit up and take notice of table tennis in India. "The Games is something big. So it (our achievement) is being seen on a bigger scale now. But the sport itself, the players have grown a lot in the last few years," he said. "We won medals in pro tours and our rankings have also improved.”

Sathiyan won a gold in the Spanish Open last year. “These are all signs that something big is waiting to happen,” he told IANS. “It's been a process. Me, Harmeet (Desai) and (Soumyajit) Ghosh started playing abroad very early in our careers. Sharath has set the benchmark for what a player can achieve with hard work."

Sathiyan also put it down to team bonding and the fact that the core group of Sharath, Harmeet, Mouma Das and Manika Batra have been playing together for some time now.

"The team has become formidable now,” he said. “The bonding was very high as we came up the ranks together from junior to senior. The bigger goal is an Olympic medal now. That is the team vision."

Praising Manika, who won four medals including two gold, one silver and a bronze to become the Games' most successful Indian athlete, Sathiyan said she has done women's table tennis a world of good. “There was so much quality and that kind of stamina...she had matches on the same day. After losing a very close mixed doubles semi-final, it's hard to come back and perform the way she did. She has set an example for women's table tennis which has been in the shadows I would say," he said.

(with inputs from IANS)