New Delhi, Dec 10 (IANS): Veteran India table tennis player Vinay Chopra, who will be competing in the ITTF World Veterans Championships in Oman in January next year, believes Manika Batra's "brilliant mind" and the "extraordinary" way she uses the dimpled rubber racquet have helped her come back strongly from the disappointment of the 2022 Commonwealth Games to become the first Indian woman to win the ITTF-ATTU Asian Cup medal in Bangkok last month.
Manika Batra defeated world No.6 Hina Hayata of Japan in the women's singles bronze-medal match to earn India's third medal at the continental meet. Before Manika, Chetan Baboor, with silver in 1997 and bronze in 2000, was the only Indian TT player to win a medal at the Asian Cup.
Manika's below-par performance at the Birmingham Commonwealth Games, where she did not win even a single medal after the high of the 2018 CWG in Gold Coast where she won four medals, did not raise hopes of a medal in a strong field in Bangkok. But the 27-year-old raised her game to the next level for the historic bronze.
"No doubt Manika has the advantage of using the (dimpled) rubber but the art of playing too matters and she has mastery over that. It's not that anyone and everyone can use that rubber and win matches. Add to that, she is a very hardworking player. I know her work ethic as she played under me at Jesus and Mary College in Delhi. I was the coach for nearly four decades at J&M College, and her elder sister too trained under me for three years. In fact, I got Manika admission in J&M College," said Chopra, who had emerged the national junior doubles champion in 1976-77 and won the National Veterans Table Tennis Championship at Srinagar in August this year.
Chopra, who is also the winner of the World Veteran Doubles event in Las Vegas, USA, in 2018 partnering Kapil Kumar, added that Manika's brilliant mind game and her ability to spend hours training the brain to play a particular shot or send down an unplayable serve is simply unparalleled.
"She has been perfecting it (mind game) for years," said Chopra, who will again partner Kapil Kumar in Oman next year.
Chopra doesn't read much into Manika's dismal showing in Birmingham, saying, winning and losing are part of the game and one learns "from losing, not from winning".
On ageless wonder Sharath Kamal, who won three gold and a silver at 2022 Birmingham at 40 years of age, Chopra said, "Winning makes you more confident every time. You inner voice tells you 'if I can achieve this, I can achieve bigger things as well'. I'll give you an example, I am going to be 62. I won the National (Veterans) Championship in the 59-plus category this year and the guy I beat in the semifinals he was a former India-ranked player. Nobody could take a game from him in the last so many Nationals. So, it ultimately comes down to confidence that 'I can beat him'. Similarly, in Sharath Kamal's case, who I suppose is now 40, confidence is helping him maintain his winning ways," said Chopra, who along with Manmeet Singh had defeated Kamlesh Mehta and Shivram in the 1976-77 Nationals final in Allahabad and beat top doubles players like Deepak Vadera, Suhas Kulkarni and Atul Parekh among others in the senior category.