Olympic champ Ma Long in top field for Goa table tennis event

Sharath Kamal, the forever face of Indian table tennis, has never seen such a field for any tournament at home. G Sathiyan, India's highest-ranked male paddler who has also been on the pro tour for nearly a decade, will for the first time in his career experience this quality of table tennis at home.

“I mean, you name the top players and they are there,” Sathiyan said.

That includes the world’s top three in men’s and women’s singles as eight of the top 10 men and seven of the top 10 women will be there. That includes Ma Long, the reigning Olympic and 13-time world champion widely considered the greatest of all time.

Welcome to the WTT Star Contender Goa, a tournament that has got the crème de la crème of world table tennis touching down in the country with the top Indian players joining in. It’s for the first time that India is hosting a World Table Tennis (WTT) event, which begins with the qualifying rounds on Monday and the main draw from Wednesday, at the Dr. Shyama Prasad Mukherjee Indoor Stadium in Taleigao, Panaji.

Star Contender is the second most prestigious event on the WTT calendar, below the WTT Grand Smash and above the WTT Contender. As things stand, only three Star Contenders have been scheduled in the 2023 WTT calendar with Goa the first.

“The WTT structure is such that these Star Contender tournaments are expensive to organise. But India is an emerging market,” Sharath, the Commonwealth Games champion, said. “From a business standpoint, it’s a fantastic event to grow. As a player, you look at such a tournament and go ‘I would like to play in this at home’.”

It’s been a while since India hosted an international TT event of such stature (discounting the Ultimate Table Tennis league, which had three seasons from 2017-2019). The Commonwealth Championships have been held multiple times and the World Championships thrice, but not since 1987 in New Delhi. The last of the four editions of the India Open, which was part of the earlier international tour, took place in 2017.

While that tournament in New Delhi had the likes of Dimitrij Ovtcharov, Germany’s former world No 1, and Tomokazu Harimoto (the Japanese teen sensation beat Sharath in the semis), the Goa event is richer by its Chinese flavour. The world’s top three in men—Fan Zhendong, Ma Long, Wang Chuqin—and women—Sun Yingsha, Chen Meng, Wang Manyu—are all from China. They will all play in India.

“It’s almost a mini world championships,” Sathiyan, the world No 41, said. “I love it when India is a TT destination. It’s not very common. So, to have this kind of tournament at home is fantastic.”

Sharath and Sathiyan—they will also play doubles together—concurred that there’s no tangible home advantage in table tennis, though aspects like weather condition and crowd support do help.

But what this tournament also does is place the young Indians alongside the tall names of the sport. The men's singles main draw also features 18-year-old Payas Jain and Wesley Do Rosario, 21. The women's singles main draw has Manika Batra, the highest-ranked Indian at 34, the rapidly improving Sreeja Akula and 16-year-old Suhana Saini. Other rising Indians, the likes of Manav Thakkar and Diya Chitale, will go through the qualifying rounds.

“As a youngster, we never had this kind of events where top players would come down and you could play at home,” Sathiyan said. “This is a very big platform to learn, see them practice, how they prepare. These are things you can’t even buy with money.

“When you play and win some big matches at home, it has a bigger impact,” Sharath, 40, added. “Indians having a sizeable participation will also provide a very good platform.”

As for the chances of Indian/s making a deep run this week, Sathiyan reckoned this field is even tougher than, say, the Olympics where there are entry restrictions per country. The big chance, he felt, was in the mixed doubles alongside in-form Manika. “If we can get into the semis or final, it will be good,” he said.

In singles it’s all about the draw, which Sathiyan hoped is favourable for him “to make one or two upsets and some inroads”.

“And hopefully,” he added, “not get Ma Long first up!”

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