“Varuni Jaiswal is a fighter. Even when the chips are down, she will do her best to find her way back into the contest,” says table tennis coach Darga Ajay Kumar, describing the sub-junior girls runner-up in the Cadet and Sub Junior National championships held at the Cherukuri Convention Centre in Rajahmundry recently. “An attacking player, her main weapon is her forehand. She’s determined, hard working and committed,” adds the former National paddler.
“Over the years she has come up well, perhaps due to her discipline and her cool temperament, both on and off the table,” he observes. Many of these traits were evident during the above-mentioned meet. Timely tips from her Gujarati Seva Mandal (GSM) coach Maduri Venugopal, who was also the Telangana state coach for the meet, tilted the scales in her favour time and again.
Her passage to the final showdown was smooth. In the quarter-finals she subdued Rajasthan’s Priyanka Pareek 3-1 and in the semis, she downed Anusha Kutumbale of Madhya Pradesh by an identical margin. In the face-off for the crown, Varuni Jaiswal clinched the first two games at 13-11 against Archana Kamat Girish but capitulated subsequently.
The 14-year-old doesn’t hesitate to take on bigger and older opponents as she did at the Junior and Youth Nationals in Alapuzha, Kerala by reaching the quarter-finals of the youth competition. The first year BPC intermediate student of St. Mary’s Junior College, Yousufguda turned a giant-killer at the National ranking North Zone championship at Agra when she posted a 3-0 victory over junior National No. 1 Shruti Amrute. Varuni’s consistency was visible again as she reached the quarter-finals in both the juniors and youth categories.
