Diya Chitale’s wait ends for senior national table tennis title

Surat: An hour before the final, Diya Chitale approached the practice table with a specific routine prepared. She played for a few minutes with her sparring partner, practicing serves and heavy topspin shots off both wings. Towards the end though, another sparring partner came in whose job was to use the long pimple rubber and simply block everything Chitale would throw at her.

At the Pandit Dindayal Indoor Stadium in Surat, Chitale was to play two-time winner Sreeja Akula in the women’s singles final of the Senior National Table Tennis Championships. Akula uses the tricky long pimple rubber on the backhand and Chitale did not want to leave any stone unturned in her bid to win a first senior nationals title.

That last-minute training paid off. Down two games to love in the best-of-seven final, Chitale came back strongly to win 4-3 and clinch the title.

“It’s an amazing feeling,” she smiled. “I’m very happy that I could become the national champion. It’s a feeling of relief that all the hard work is paying off. I have won the sub-juniors, juniors and youth national titles earlier and because of that I knew I wanted this badly.”

She roared in delight as Akula’s final forehand crashed into the net. On the sidelines her coach Sachin Shetty sank to the flood. Her parents, sitting in the stands, were in tears.

“We’ve been waiting for this for a very long time,” her father Parag told HT. “She’s won national titles in different age groups, but in the seniors her best was the quarter-final. She has been slogging for this.”

Chitale had her strategies well set for the match. There was the preparation for the long-pimple use on Akula’s backhand, but she was aggressive in her attacks on the world No.28’s forehand as well. The 21-year-old from Mumbai often rushed Akula on the forehand, not allowing her opponent time to reload for a big drive off that wing – just as she did on the title-winning point.

The win on Sunday gave her the biggest title available on the domestic circuit. Internationally though, she has been patiently plying her trade. In singles, she is world No.110. In mixed doubles, however, she is No.14 with Manush Shah, who won the men’s singles.

The duo reached the semi-final in three WTT Contender events last year while picking up the title at the WTT Feeder event in Beirut. Moving ahead though, Chitale wants to take it “one step at a time”.

First steps in table tennis

Chitale was seven she first saw a table tennis game, her father and uncle playing while on a family vacation.

“She was always the sporty kind, wanted to do swimming and skating,” recalls Parag. “When she saw us, she also wanted to play. We got her enrolled at the Khar Gymkhana where she started training. In a month, her then coach Gandeep Bhiwandkar told us we need to get her to come in six times a week rather than three because there was something good about her.”

Chitale started to play district-level matches soon after and winning an individual silver and team gold at the Under-12 nationals when she was 11 made her determined to pursue the sport.

She has been training with Shetty since 2013 but two years later had started taking trips to Germany to learn under former India national coach Peter Engel. She has also been working with Korean coach Shin Min Sung.

Manush Shah’s first crown

In the men’s singles, world No.78 Shah won his first title at the Senior Nationals, which came days after he had reached a career-high ranking. Despite losing the first game against Delhi’s Payas Jain, the Baroda-native came back strongly to win four games on the trot, emerging victorious after a display of power-hitting and accuracy. Shah won 10-12, 11-6, 11-6, 12-10, 11-8.

Akash Pal and Poymantee Baisya beat Jash Modi and Taneesha Kotecha in the mixed doubles final.