Who is Dipika Pallikal - A squash poster-girl and a supermom

Indian squash has produced its fair share of stars over the years but none, perhaps, can match the impact Dipika Pallikal has on the sport.

A doubles world champion and Asian and Commonwealth Games gold medal winner, Dipika boasts an impressive catch of international medals. She is also the first Indian woman to break into the top 10 of the world singles squash rankings.

Where is Dipika Pallikal from

Dipika Pallikal was born on September 21, 1991. Her father Sanjiv Pallikal is a businessman while her mother Susan Pallikal (nee Itticheria) is a former cricketer, who played for the Indian women’s cricket team.

Dipika also has two sisters, Divya and Diya. Diya is married to Dipika’s fellow Indian squash player Saurav Ghosal. Though her parents were from Kerala, Dipika was born and brought up in Chennai and it was here that her journey in squash began.

She participated in her first squash competition in London while studying in the sixth grade at the Good Shepherd and Lady Andal School in Chennai and by the age of 11, Dipika Pallikal was a national champion.

At the tender age of 15, Dipika had turned pro but successes on the international stage only started coming after 2011. It was a brief training stint in Egypt that boosted her career. 

Dipika Pallikal’s achievements

The Chennai-based athlete won her first pro title - the Orange County Open in California - in September 2011 and followed up with two more titles that year. A top-eight finish at the World Open that year also saw Dipika rise to world No. 14 in the women’s singles world rankings, surpassing Misha Grewal’s 27th from 1995, which was previously the best-ever ranking of any Indian woman in the game.

Before that, Dipika Pallikal was a part of the Indian women’s team which won bronze at the 2010 Asian Games in Guangzhou - the first of her six medals at the continental meet.

In 2012, Dipika helped the Indian squash team finish fifth in the Women's World Team Squash Championships and produced several credible performances at big-ticket events. In December 2012, she was ranked 10th in the world, making Dipika the first Indian woman to break into the top 10 in the women’s singles squash world rankings.

At the Commonwealth Games 2014 in Glasgow, Dipika Pallikal, partnering Joshna Chinappa, created a piece of history by clinching the women’s doubles gold medal. The Indian duo beat English top seeds Jenny Duncalf and Laura Massaro to bag what was the first CWG gold by Indian women.

The men’s team, led by Saurav Ghosal, had won India’s first Commonwealth Games squash gold a few days earlier.

Dipika also won two medals at the 2014 Asian Games in Incheon - a bronze in singles and a silver in the women’s team event. 

The 2016 season saw Dipika win the mixed doubles silver with Ghosal at the World Doubles Championships. She also clinched the women’s doubles bronze with Joshna at the same event.

The Indian squash player finished with a silver medal in the women’s singles event at the 2017 Asian Individual Championships, losing to compatriot Joshna Chinappa in the final.

In 2018, Dipika, again, won medals at both the Commonwealth and Asian Games. At the Gold Coast CWG, Dipika won the silver medals in the mixed doubles and women’s doubles events. She won a women’s singles bronze at the Asian Games in Jakarta.

However, despite being on a winning streak Dipika Pallikal, who married former Indian cricketer Dinesh Karthik in 2015, opted to take a step back from being a professional athlete.

“I think I was stagnated in my career,” Dipika Pallikal Karthik later told The Hindu. “I wasn’t moving up; I wasn’t moving down. I wasn’t winning big matches.

“It was never about me not putting in the work. I’ve always been someone who puts 100 percent effort into my training and goes out of the way to do different things, to work with different coaches,” Dipika added. 

“But I think for those one-and-a-half to two years, I wasn’t getting the results I wanted, which culminated in me not enjoying what I was doing.”

Dipika used the time to set up a successful interior designing business with her best friend and on October 18, 2021, she gave birth to twin sons - Kabir and Zian.

After staying off the courts for over three years, Dipika returned to the world of squash and made an immediate impact. In her comeback event, the World Doubles Championships 2022 in Glasgow, Dipika created history on two fronts.

Dipika paired up with Ghosal to win the mixed doubles gold and became one-half of the first Indian squash world champions. She paired up with Joshna hours later to pocket the women’s doubles gold at the Glasgow meet.

Later in 2022, Dipika won the mixed doubles bronze at the Birmingham Commonwealth Games and a year later, along with Harinder Pal Sandhu earned the distinction of being the first mixed doubles squash champions at the Asian Games, winning a gold at Hangzhou 2023.

Juggling the responsibilities of being a mother and a professional athlete takes a lot of effort but Dipika seems to have struck a fine balance.

“I like these responsibilities. Maybe I perform a little better with that responsibility on my shoulders,” Dipika, who has decided to focus exclusively on doubles since her comeback, said.

With 11 professional titles to her name in addition to the international medals, Dipika Pallikal is also one of the most decorated Indian squash players of all time. She was also the first Indian women’s squash player to win the Arjuna Award in 2012. A Padma Shri followed for the two-time national champion in 2014.

Dipika Pallikal’s medals and records

• First Indian to be ranked in top 10 of the women’s singles squash rankings
• Asian Games medals - gold in mixed doubles (2023), bronze in women’s singles (2014, 2018), silver in women’s team (2014), bronze in women’s team (2023, 2010)
• Commonwealth Games medals - gold in women’s doubles (2014), silver in women’s doubles (2018), silver in mixed doubles (2018), bronze in mixed doubles (2022)
• World Doubles Championships medals - gold in women’s doubles (2022), gold in mixed doubles (2022), silver in mixed doubles (2016), bronze in women’s doubles (2016, 2017)
• Asian Individual Championships medals - silver in women's doubles (2017)