The Indian juniors finished fourth in the team event of the World Championship in Zurich recently. It was a performance that exceeded all expectations, writes S. R. Suryanarayan.
Abhinav Bindra winning the gold medal is undoubtedly the biggest story of Indian sport in recent times. The ace shooter showed what commitment and single-minded pursuit, backed by the best of facilities and a good coach, can do to a competitor seeking excellence. In a way, the story of Indian squash follows a similar path.
Indian squash has talent, structured training, a top class facility, a proven coach and of course that most important ingredient of all, commitment. In the eight years since the ICL Squash Academy was established in Chennai, the sport has seen a quiet revolution in the country. Several milestones had been reached and the latest is the performance of the Indian team in the Junior World Championship in Zurich.
The Indian junior men’s team returned from Switzerland, winning the fourth place — the nation’s best ever performance in a World Championship.
Six years ago, with players like Saurav Ghosal, Siddharth Suchde, Gaurav Nandrajog and Sahil Vora, India had come fifth. But now, the Indian team, comprising Vikram Malhotra, Aditya Jagtap, Ravi Dixit and Ramit Tandon, has done its predecessors and all those involved in the development of the sport in the country proud with its fine performance.
After watching the performance of the Indian boys at the start of the championship in Zurich, Maj. (retd) S. Maniam, the Malaysian coaching expert who has been drawing the development plans for Indian squash, said, “Looking at what is on display I am convinced a top-four position is definitely on the cards in 2010.” And as it happened, the young players gave their mentor a pleasant surprise by finishing fourth this time itself.
According to Maj. Maniam what appealed to him the most about players like Vikram, Aditya and Ravi was their mature approach in crunch situations. “It is one thing to train the players, make them understand the various situations in a match and quite another to see them exceed expectations with their quick thinking and skills,” he said.
The SRFI’s consultant coach was of the view that India’s performance augurs well for the future. “I must now upgrade my expectations of Indian juniors in the next World Championship two years from now. Anything below a third place finish will not be acceptable,” he said.
Given the frequency with which new talents have been emerging from the ICL Academy, Maj. Maniam’s expectations may not be far fetched. In fact, for a brief moment a third place finish seemed possible in Zurich, but India was narrowly beaten by England. After Vikram Malhotra had taken the lead with a 3-1 win over Joe Lee, Ravi Dixit kept India’s hopes alive by winning the first game against Alex Ingham. Here began Ingham’s fightback as he beat Ravi and then Adrian Waller accounted for Aditya Jagtap to herald England’s win.
India, however, will cherish its wins against the US, Australia and France. The Indians came up with sterling performances in each of those matches.
In all, 31 countries participated in the championship.
In the individual competition, the performance of the Indians wasn’t all that bright with Vikram Malhotra being the lone player to reach the round of 16.
The next edition of the World Championship should see the Indian players doing well in the individual competitions for they will be fine tuned at the Academy under Maj. Maniam and National Coach Cyrus Poncha.
Speaking of India’s performance in the team event, the SRFI Secretary General, N. Ramachandran said, “It is truly exciting that the team reached the top four in the World Championship and this is definitely praiseworthy.”
For the record, Mohammed El Shorbagy of Egypt won the individual title, while Pakistan bagged the team championship.
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