To say she was distraught can be an understatement. After her heart-breaking 3-4 (11-3, 6-11, 2-11, 11-7, 13-15, 11-9, 7-11) loss to Australia’s Yangzi Liu within the ladies’s singles bronze medal match of the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham, India’ Sreeja Akula was inconsolable.
Half an hour later, Sharath Kamal, India’s 40-year-old desk tennis star, had simply completed a match himself. He walked into the dressing room and on seeing the 24-year-old Sreeja crying, he mentioned one thing that might lighten the temper.
“Don’t cry now, cry after the mixed doubles match,” he mentioned with fun, referring to the ultimate he was alleged to play alongside Sreeja in about 5 hours.
Sreeja couldn’t management her laughter.
She and Sharath teamed as much as win India’s first-ever blended doubles Commonwealth Games gold and it was a type of redemption for Sreeja after her loss earlier within the day.
This was additionally the second when the choice of Sreeja’s dad and mom to again their daughter’s desk tennis profession and put teachers on the backburner paid off.
Till Sreeja turned 18, that they had no thought whether or not she may make a profession out of the game.
“Nobody in my family is a sportsperson,” Sreeja tells The Indian Express after coming back from Birmingham. “When you don’t have a sportsperson in your family, there’s always an apprehension of being a professional athlete.”
Sreeja’s desk tennis journey started on the age of eight. Watching her sister, Ravali — who’s three years older than her — play and excel at state tournaments, Sreeja needed to be like her.
“My dad did play table tennis at local tournaments but it wasn’t at a high level. My parents wanted my sister to play some indoor sport and because my dad loved table tennis, they decided to enroll her in classes,” she says.
Though Ravali confirmed loads of promise, research bought in the best way after Grade 10. She gave up desk tennis for teachers. So when Sreeja reached that age, she thought that the pure development was to surrender desk tennis and deal with her research.
“I wanted to become a chartered accountant. My sister convinced me and my family not to make the same mistake she made. She convinced me to continue playing TT because she saw how much I loved it and that I was quite decent at it too,” she says.
There was one other downside. Though she was doing nicely on the junior stage, her dad and mom weren’t fairly certain it will be financially sustainable to play a sport professionally.
“It’s only when I turned 18 and got a job with RBI because of table tennis that my family let go of that apprehension. It was then that I too could concentrate more on the sport because I didn’t have to worry about the financial aspect.”
2019 was the breakthrough 12 months for her, she says. “It was the first time I played in the senior category and won two medals. At the Commonwealth TT Championships in Cuttack, I won bronze in singles and mixed doubles and silver in doubles.”
While Sreeja and Sharath made the unlikeliest of partnerships in Birmingham, that they had partnered with one another as soon as earlier than. And it occurred by probability.
“At the 2019 Commonwealth Championship, it so happened that Manika (Batra) fell sick after the team event. And since I play with a pimpled rubber like her, Sharath asked me to play with him. I was so nervous but we ended up winning bronze so it was alright,” she says.
While she was taking part in her greatest in 2019, the Covid-19 pandemic hit and that meant a break. And she wasn’t used to taking breaks. “I like to over-work myself. I train all the time so I wasn’t used to so much free time but I quite enjoyed it. I got to spend time with family and that was quite refreshing,” she says.
This 12 months she received the nationwide championships, sealing a spot in India’s crew for the Commonwealth Games. “It’s like I’m living a dream, but a dream I’ve worked very hard for,” she says.
So what does she anticipate to vary after her gold in Birmingham? Not a lot, Sreeja, who trains in Hyderabad, says.
“I’ll still have to drive 40 minutes at 5.45am to my training center. I’ll still take the metro every evening to avoid traffic. If anything, I’ll be training harder,” Sreeja, who’s coached by Somnath Ghosh at his academy in a Hyderabad mall, says.
