“In table tennis, I insist on taking it game by game. Of course, it is best when a child starts young, may be five or six years of age. Sport is about getting a child into a systematic way of life involving practice and physical training. Physical training is integral to getting a systematic player and that is where schools can really help by hiring professional coaches in the school. A child trained in the systematic way can easily grow when he/she moves into clubs later on.
With beginners, I start off by giving them the ball very, very slow. That, I think, is the best way to develop their hand-eye co-ordination. It takes a little long to know how far a child will go in sports. By the time a student is 15 years of age, a coach will know if he or she will stop at the district, State, national or international level. I joined the Table Tennis Academy in Kozhikode in 2008, and so far we have had six national-level players.
I was born and brought up in Howrah and was a State-level table tennis player. I go home for a month every year. My mother and grandmother make my family and till now they have never stopped me from being where ever I want to be for my job. I learnt table tennis coaching under my coach Jayanta Pushkar. The training lasted for about a year and I coached students in West Bengal and Goa before coming here.
I have stayed on in Kozhikode for I am really impressed by the Table Tennis Academy in the city. It comprises a lot of former players and that makes it great. Now I work with the JDT Islam and initially I coached children belonging to the institution. Once we started improving and started showing results, children from other schools too started coming here for coaching.
Now I am coaching about 22 kids and I see a lot of talent. But what has to change is the attitude towards sports; one has to stop seeing it as a means for securing marks. I have been trying to change it. The way the children think of sports will slowly change for the better when you constantly talk to them and so too their parents. Initially, the students consider coaching as an hour’s activity, parents too will be keen to take them back home. But now, children have started taking practice seriously. At least a few of them from the JDT orphanage now want to seriously pursue the game so that they can earn a job with it.
Now, I travel a lot with the kids. I take them for all State and national level competitions. Students also attend two camps annually.
It is here that they get to interact with some of the best players in their group. Ideally, we should now be looking at quality and these camps give the kids the right kind of exposure.”
A column on the men and women who make Kozhikode what it is.
