Sreeja Akula (16th) and Manika Batra (18th) are the highest-seeded Indian players at the Paris 2024 Olympics table tennis tournament, which begins on July 27. The International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF) revealed the seedings on Tuesday. A total of 67 players are seeded in each of the men’s and women’s singles competitions, while 16 teams each are seeded for both team events, as per a release by Olympics.com. Last month, Sreeja Akula reached a career-best No. 24 in the world table tennis rankings, displacing Manika Batra as India’s top women’s singles player.

The 25-year-old Sreeja, a two-time national champion, became the first Indian table tennis player to win a WTT Contender singles title at Lagos in June. Partnering with Archana Kamath, she also bagged the doubles title.

World No. 28 Manika Batra, meanwhile, is seeded only two places below her compatriot at the Paris 2024 Olympics.

A former Commonwealth Games champion, Manika made the Saudi Smash women’s singles quarterfinal in May, becoming the first Indian singles table tennis player to reach the last eight of a WTT Grand Smash event. Manika will be making her third straight appearance in the Olympics.

Sharath Kamal is set to make his fifth Olympic appearance. The two-time Commonwealth Games men’s singles champion is seeded 24th at the Paris 2024 Olympics. At Tokyo 2020, the 41-year-old veteran was ousted in the third round, his best finish at the Olympic Games to date.

National champion Harmeet Desai, ranked 86th in the world in men’s singles, is seeded 49th. He will make his Olympic debut.

Meanwhile, India will debut in the team table tennis events at the upcoming Olympics, where the four singles players will be joined by Manav Thakkar (men’s team) and Archana Kamath (women’s team).

Both the men’s and women’s team events were introduced to the Olympic programme at Beijing in 2008.

Seeded 14th at Paris 2024, the Indian men’s table tennis team is among the top five Asian teams. Manika Batra and Co. are seeded 11th in the women’s team event.

All six Indian table tennis players made the cut for Paris 2024 via their world rankings. There is no Indian representation in the mixed doubles tournament, the release added.

Table tennis at the Paris 2024 Olympics will be conducted between July 27 and August 10. All five competitions – men’s singles, women’s singles, mixed doubles, men’s team and women’s team – will be played at the South Paris Arena.

The Olympic-bound Indian table tennis team is currently training in the German city of Saarbrucken with the support staff outnumbering the players who will be competing in Paris. Italy’s Massimo Costantini, who has returned as India’s head coach for a third third time ahead of the Paris Olympics, is getting help from former player Sourav Chakraborty as the other national coach of the contingent. What is unusual is that as many as four personal coaches have been cleared by the government to travel with the squad with all three members of the women’s team wanting their own through their stay in the Summer Games beginning July 26.

Two masseurs and a physio are the other members of the nine-man support staff while six members form the playing contingent (three men, three women).

Star women’s player Manika Batra, Sreeja Akula and Archana Kamath will lean on their respective personal coaches during the course of their campaign in Paris.

In the three-member men’s team, India’s flag-bearer Sharath Kamal will have Chris Pfeiffer by his side at the Games. Harmeet Desai and Manav Thakkar are the other members of the men’s unit.

The presence of so many coaches can lead to floating of too many ideas in the camp but Costantini, who has been with the squad for more than a month, doesn’t see it as a problem.

“The personal coaches are a part of the team mechanism. They will have their ideas and I have my own ideas. I will listen to them and they will listen to me and eventually the final call lies with me. I don’t see anything wrong in that,” Costantini told PTI from Saarbrucken.

However, only designated team coaches will have field of play access while the personal coaches can only watch the action from the stands and will also stay outside the Games’ village.

The Indian table tennis unit had courted a major controversy during the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 when Manika refused the court-side help of then national coach Soumyadeep Roy and later accused him of match-fixing.

That incident led to the suspension of Table Tennis Federation of India due to a “sorry” state of affairs in the national sports federation.

Ahead of the 2024 edition, all the personal coaches left with the Indian contingent for Saarbrucken last week. The team will train there till July 21 before heading to Paris.

The individual events will precede the team event in which India has secured a first ever qualification in both the categories. The seedings will be announced on Tuesday.

“Olympics is an event of life. The focus of the camp here is on footwork and stamina. Both mental and physical fitness is key especially in best of seven games scenario,” Costantini said.

“The mind and body have to be in sync for the players to excel. We are training in a pressure free environment,” added the Italian.

Set for his fifth Olympic appearance in Paris, Indian flagbearer Achanta Sharath Kamal feels he is scaling new heights with each passing year and believes his “best is yet to come.” The 41-year-old turned the clock back to win three gold medals, including one in men’s singles, at the Birmingham Commonwealth Games in 2022. He returned empty-handed at last year’s Asian Games in Hangzhou, but Sharath helped Indian men’s team clinch a historic Paris Olympics quota via world rankings following their last-16 finish at the World Table Tennis Championships in Busan in February.

“I am happy that I’m scaling new heights with each passing year, besides improving both physically and mentally. I hope the best is yet to come,” the top-ranked Indian told PTI.

“To highlight one particular achievement from my career would not do justice to my other achievements. The Asian Games bronze (Jakarta 2018) and Commonwealth Games gold are two of the highs of my career,” said the Sharath, who boasts of 13 CWG medals in his cabinet.

“I’m pretty sure I haven’t left any stone unturned. I have done everything possible from my side, and I hope the results will follow,” added Sharath, who has climbed from being world No 88 to 34 in ITTF rankings.

Having begun his Olympic journey at Athens 2004 as a 21-year-old, Sharath dreams of a podium finish after reuniting with Italian coach Massimo Costantini.

“Back then, I didn’t know what getting into the Olympics was. But I have built up into the player I am right now, and hopefully, in my fifth Olympics, I have a chance to get that medal. And once that happens, I can be truly satisfied with my career,” he reckoned.

The 66-year-old had coached India from 2009-2010 and from 2016-2018 was part of their success at 2018 Commonwealth Games and 2018 Asian Game. India had bagged a record haul of eight medals at the CWG 2018, followed by two bronze at the Indonesia showpiece.

“He brings a lot of confidence from around himself and to the team. It is something that I require since a lot of us are working individually. But how can we get it together, Max has been helping us in achieving it.” But to speak of the reality, a podium finish is going to be an “uphill task”, Sharath acknowledged.

“It’s going to be very tough, and we are apparently seeded 14th or 15th, making the task even more uphill. But, we are optimistic as well because with the kind of form all of us have been playing.

“The girls are going to go a long way in the Olympics, same for the boys. We want to do it,” he said.

He further said he has learnt ‘periodisation’ or systematic training as he looks to implement the knowledge this time around.

“It has immensely helped me in preparations — trying to understand my body and mind. Periodisation is something that I have learnt over the years, and I’m looking to bring that knowledge into practice in Paris,” he said.

“I’m not getting younger any day. Age is not on my side, and I have to ensure that I reverse the clock. It is something that I’m trying to get better for this Olympics,” he said.

Sharath has also undergone a slew of tests, including genetic and bone density scans to get better through sports science.

“It was mainly to ensure that I don’t make mistakes about what exactly has to be done. For instance, I have an intolerance towards some substance, how to stay away from it and to have the best knowledge from sports science,” he explained.

“I did not have a major access to sports science before Tokyo, and only then I realised that it can help us in getting better. That’s the reason we do these tests to ensure that even the small differences go a long way, especially in situations like the Olympics.” A few months back, Sharath underwent a training session in Germany for four weeks, and he confessed that he did work a lot on his technical aspects during this session.

“There I focused a lot on working on my technical aspects and sharpening my skills, and I tried to practice with different levels of players in different conditions. It’s helped me a lot, and now it’s time to put all those (learnings) into action,” he added in the interaction arranged by Timelinks. 

File image of Sharath Kamal© AFP

Veteran Sharath Kamal and world no. 24 Manika Batra will lead the Indian men’s and women’s squads respectively at the Paris Games, where the country will make its Olympic debut in team events. The senior selection committee of the Table Tennis Federation of India on Thursday picked a six-member squad (three in each section) as per the Olympics norms, besides naming the individuals who would compete in the singles events. Sharath, Harmeet Desai, and Manav Thakkar will form the three-member men’s team, while Manika, Sreeja Akula and Archana Kamath will be squad members in the women’s category.

The “Alternate Player” in each section would be G. Sathiyan and Ayhika Mukherjee.

In the men’s singles, Sharath and Harmeet will compete and it will be Manika and Sreeja in the women’s event.

The decision was taken based on the latest world rankings.

It will be the fifth and final Olympic appearance for 41-year-old Sharath, who made his Games debut back in 2004.

Since the selection of the squads and the individuals were as per the already pronounced TTFI criteria, three players “got selected themselves” because of their consistent performances over time and world rankings.

However, there was a debate over the third player for the women’s squad. After Manika and Sreeja Akula walked in on the back of their higher world rankings (top 50), Archana Kamath (103) made it to the team as the third player.

The Bengaluru paddler edged out Ayhika Mukherjee (133) on several counts, including her ranking.

As for the men, Sharath picked himself as the top-ranked Indian at No. 40, while Harmeet (No. 63) and Manav (No. 62) were separated by one slot in WR.

Though both made it to the team composition, National champion Harmeet got the selectors’ nod based on his international (better win-loss proportion to his participation) and national performances.

Incidentally, Massimo Costantini’s presence as a special invitee at the meeting also added teeth as the foreign expert’s inputs proved handy in the selection of the squads.

Costantini will take charge of the Indian team for a third time as early as next week. He arrived in India earlier this week.

Alternate players Sathiyan and Ayhika will travel with the team to Paris but will not stay in the official Games Village. Their services would be needed in case of an injury.

The teams: Men: A. Sharath Kamal, Harmeet Desai, and Manav Thakkar; Alternate Player: G. Sathiyan.

Women: Manika Batra, Sreeja Akula, and Archana Kamath; Alternate Player: Ayhika Mukherjee. PTI BS TAP

Neeraj Chopra won India’s only gold medal at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021.© AFP