For more than four decades since he hung up his boots at 22 to join the family business empire, Niraj Bajaj, former India table tennis captain, had numerous requests to be associated with the game that he loved and “gave so much” to him.
But he didn’t find anything worthwhile until last year when Vita Dani and Kamlesh Mehta founded the firm 11Sports solely for the promotion of table tennis.
“For once, I thought someone was taking a professional approach for the development of table tennis.
“That’s when they talked about the Ultimate Table Tennis (UTT) and it was, by Indian standards, very very ambitious,” Bajaj, who came on board as the UTT co-promoter, told The Hindu after the conclusion of UTT's Pune leg.
No compromise
“In 50 years since I started playing table tennis, I have not seen players getting the best of everything — logistics, accommodation in five-star hotels, quality of international players and television coverage. I said that if I am associating with an initiative, there should be no compromise. That was the vision for Vita and the rest of the team.”
Despite the UTT promoters bleeding financially right now, Bajaj, who is one of the youngest Arjuna award recipients, is least concerned about it. At the same time, he is upbeat on the UTT breaking even sooner than expected.
“Of course we wouldn’t like to keep putting in money. We are very happy if UTT sustains on its own. But what matters is are we giving quality to the audience, to our players; are we giving facilities to our players; are they benefiting from it?
“And you see the performance, how much they have improved in the last two years. If they keep improving, when will UTT make money becomes irrelevant,” Bajaj said.