Who is Archana Kamath? Five things to know about India’s rising table tennis star
Kamath and Manika Batra won their first women’s doubles title together at the World Table Tennis Contender Lasko
India’s rising table tennis star Archana Kamath won her first big tour title on Sunday as she and Manika Batra won the women’s doubles crown at the World Table Tennis Contender Lasko. The Indian pair defeated Puerto Rican sisters Adriana and Melanie Diaz 11-3, 11-8, 12-10 in the final.
This was also the second successive week that Indians have tasted success in table tennis. G Sathiyan and Harmeet Desai had won the men’s doubles title at the WTT Contender in Tunis last week.
As Indian table tennis continues to make its mark on the world stage, we look at 21-year-old Kamath’s journey so far:
Family and background
Kamath, born on June 17, 2000, hails from Bengaluru. Her parents, Girish and Anuradha Kamath are opthalmologists.
She was introduced to the sport at the age of nine, when she was visiting an uncle in Mangalore who happened to have a ping pong table at home. It was her brother Abhinav who was more enthusiastic about the game and would spar with her.
“He loved the game much more than me and I just happened to be there. But he was very nice to me as well. Sometimes, he would deliberately lose to me so that I wouldn’t cry,” Kamath was quoted saying by Scroll.in.
Early success
It wasn’t too long before Kamath made her mark in district and state championships. In 2011, she won the Under-12 and surprisingly the Under-18 titles at the state championships. Two years later, she bagged an unprecedented 30 titles, across age categories, at the Karnataka State Ranking Table Tennis Tournaments.
In November 2014, she became the youngest player to win the U-21 national title at the age of 14 years and five months.
Kamath won her first senior national title in 2018. She defeated Batra in the semifinal and rallied to a 12-10, 6-11, 11-9, 12-10, 7-11, 11-3 win over Krittwika Sinha Roy of West Bengal in the final.
Youth Olympics
Despite much domestic success, what helped her gain confidence on the world stage was a fourth place finish at the 2018 Youth Olympics in Buenos Aires.
She defeated Azerbaijan’s Jing Ning 4-3 to become the first Indian player, male or female, to enter the semifinals of the Youth Olympic Games in table tennis. In the last four, she went down 11-8, 11-13, 9-11, 5-11, 9-11 to Romania’s Andreea Dragoman.
Playing style
Though Kamath is small of stature, she is big on aggression.
“I love to attack, I want to attack every ball,” Kamath told the official ITTF website during a 2017 interview. “I feel like playing the way men play. My approach is that I have nothing to lose. They, on the other hand, don’t want to lose to a small girl.”
She has been training in Germany under coach Peter Engel since 2014 and also played for TSV 1909 Langstadt. “There are so many spectators, some 150 people,” she said of the experience. “It feels really great to play in front of a crowd. The standard of competition is so high. This exposure really helped me improve my game.”
Currently, she trains under Bona Thomas John and Sagayaraj at the Padukone-Dravid Centre for Sports Excellence in Bengaluru.
Role model
Kamath’s role model is Saina Nehwal, a trailblazer for women’s badminton in India.
“My role model is Saina Nehwal, the Indian badminton player,” the TT star said. “She’s great for what she has done for the country. She works really hard.”
Nehwal was the first Indian to win an Olympic medal in badminton as she bagged a bronze medal at London 2012.