After never having won a single match at three Table Tennis’ Smash events (like Tennis’ Grand Slams), Manika Batra strung together three top-notch wins in a row at the Saudi Smash this week. Though she went down 4-1 to Hina Hayata on Thursday, the 28-year-old Indian did well to reach the quarters alongside 4 Chinese and 3 Japanese, the top tier of paddlers.
Her deep foray into Last 8 at Jeddah also saw her crack her career-best world’s Top 23. Though two months out from the Paris Olympics, the heartening aspect for coach Aman Balgu is how the tall, fierce Indian, who was No.31 earlier, now has the world’s Top 20 firmly in her sights.
Batra’s last 10 major defeats had come against 6 Chinese and 3 Japanese, and it was time to tell the Commonwealth Games champion that the minor gold medal from 2018, wasn’t enough. Balgu who’s been coaching her for 20 months now, and was 7 years her senior on past Indian teams, concedes they were never on the same page and contrasts in their thinking were wildly pronounced.
Manika was an overwhelmingly instinctive player, and she pulled off a bunch of mid-wins on sheer gut feels. Balgu, a stickler for strategy, preferred getting into opponents’ minds and playing with plans, and reckoned Batra had gotten rigid in her game by 2022 when he was coaching her domestic rival Reeth Tennison. Balgu also knew she was in Chinese crosshairs after the Asia Cup win at Doha, simply seeing how her reactions, starts and serves were getting neatly x-rayed by their top players.
As the India star and the meticulous, no-nonsense, self-assured coach got working, plenty of arguments occurred. Except, he would pull videos of her losses against the Chinese, and politely throw a poser, “Tell me, can you beat these Chinese just on instinct? She said No. I told her she needed strategy. We’ll find you something,” he recalls. Batra, fiercely talented and a firebrand, needed to be told that what worked against Top 40 wasn’t enough for the Top 15. “She first needed to have playing options to get into a position where the instinct could kick in and matter,” he says.
She was getting trashed plainly even before moments of magic could be summoned. She was ready to dig deep.
The 10-day camp ahead of Saudi was intensive and exhausting. “It was really hard and intense. She went really 3 times her capacity. We trained on the table for 5-6 hours a day. Normally it’s 4 hours. We also did fitness for one and a half hours and then spent an hour in recovery. But intensity wasn’t just physical, but in terms of ideas. Her brain was pushed to limits. We did this without a break,” Balgu explains.
Trusting the forehand
Besides Batra beginning to trust her forehand, her approach when attacking and going aggressive has significantly changed. “In Saudi.. her service positions have changed totally but nobody is noticing that. Generally her ratio of service is 80% from the backhand or centre. This tournament the ratio is gone to 50-50. She’s serving 50% from the forehand side. We had practised this more. Normally she goes to the tournament and tries it out. This time it wasn’t a trial. It was purely intentional and natural,” the coach adds.
Having been thrashed by Nina Mittelham thrice in the past, cooked each time by playing to her strong backhand corners, Batra increased her attacks to the German’s forehand this time. Purely pointed and intentional. In the famous win against Wang Manyu, Batra twice placed the twiddle instead of lambasting it like she usually does. “In training despite yelling, 100 times to not go hard on this, she would smack it. But in the match, she just blocked,” Balgu says gleefully.
Balgu says he’s slowly steered her towards thinking independently. “I wanted her to be prepared for all situations. I don’t know if I’ll be able to travel with her to Olympics,” he explains though her German sparring partner Kirill Barabanov, guided her ably, till her court endurance gave out in quarters after being mentally drained in the clinical three-game Mittelham win.
When Batra first started coaching under Balgu, her confidence was in tatters.
“She was going through a lot of personal issues and her ranking was in freefall. She didn’t trust anyone, and that meant her reactions on the table were slow because she was constantly doubting herself. TT is a fast game, like Bombay ki life, quick decisions. You can’t think at the pace of a Tier 3 city dweller. But her trust had to be brought back. I convinced her I’m on her side, by being honest. There was no hiding or manipulation. I told her where her game stood and how she can be much more than her past best. The day she said she wasn’t here to stay average or mediocre, we knew we were going all-out,” he recalls.
Balgu is aware a bulk of work remains, after Hina Hayata’s corner ball from backhand proved too quick and too wide for a scrambling Batra. “It’s just quarters, she’s not won a Smash or anything. Physical ability, strategy need to get sharper. On court endurance isn’t great yet. But now she’s more aggressive on her forehand and backhand, her approach is proactive, she can step back and turn when needed. Two years back she wasn’t winning against the Top 20, now we are talking Chinese and Japanese,” he says.
