V.S. Hari Krishna preferred to punch above his weight right from an early age. Unlike several children who fake their dates of birth to play against younger rivals, he showed a penchant to take on tougher, if not older, opponents.
Such an approach stood him in good stead as the 14-year-old, who should be playing in the junior category, clinched the youth boys (under 21 years) title of the St. Paul’s Stag Table Tennis Academy state ranking tournament recently. All those training sessions at the aforementioned academy with former international G. Jitender and Shreyas Jagirdar, another senior player, had paid off.
Hari attributes his recent success to the 45-day national camp held at Lucknow in summer, where he learnt new techniques from the German coach Peter Angel. “This outing gave me a lot of experience and confidence,” says the youngster.
Setting out in the sport as an eight-year-old, the class X student of Gitanjali Devashray built up an impressive body of achievement. In March, he clinched a bronze double in the International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF) Global Junior Circuit tournament at Panaji, Goa. After claiming the cadet singles bronze, he joined hands with another Hyderabad lad, Snehit Fidel Rohit, to corner the doubles bronze.
“It was a dream come true to wear India colours and play before the home crowd,” the teenager said of the Goa experience. Hari finished fifth in the Table Tennis Federation of India’s (TTFI) 2013 sub-junior boys rankings. In the singles of the said section, he claimed bronze at the National ranking championship at Ajmer in December last year.
With Chinese paddler Zhang Jike for role model, Hari embarked on the table tennis journey under the tutelage of Maduri Venugopal and is currently coached by Ibrahim Khan and P. Nagender Reddy.
