Table Tennis stalwart Sharath Kamal – evergreen and minting medals

After playing 13 matches in the final four days of the 2022 Commonwealth Games (CWG), Sharath Kamal’s body, holding up just fine until then, quickly shut down. Lying down at the back of the bus taking the paddler to the closing ceremony for flag-bearer duties, so did the 40-year-old.

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“I fell asleep completely. Somebody had to wake me up, and then lift me up as well,” Sharath says, his back “fully gone” by then. “I think my body just gave up, saying: I can’t help you move anymore.

“Putting your body and mind through that torture... sometimes you win, sometimes you lose.”

In Birmingham, Sharath, 40, won a lot—all but one match competing in three events during that frenetic final phase. It gave him a men’s doubles silver with G Sathiyan (that final the only defeat in that period), a mixed doubles gold with Sreeja Akula and the singles gold, his first since 2006 Melbourne. Add the men’s team gold from earlier that week and make it four medals from the 2022 CWG for Indian table tennis’ trailblazer.

On the penultimate day, Sharath, partnering Sathiyan, began with a defeat in the men's doubles gold match to England’s Liam Pitchford and Paul Drinkhall. A little over three hours later, he won his singles semi-final against Drinkhall 4-2. At 8pm local time, out came Sharath again with Sreeja, 24, winning one of the most unexpected gold medals beating Malaysia’s Javen Choong and Karen Lyne 3-1. By the time the medal ceremony and other engagements ended, it was almost 10pm.

“I had to rush for recovery,” Sharath recalls. “The next morning, I could sense my body not reacting the way it should. But I knew it was just one match. I had to go and get it done.”

He duly did, a clinical 4-1 win over Pitchford in the singles final for a CWG singles gold after 16 years to cap off a memorable Games.

“Physically and mentally, it all fell into place in 2022. In 2014 (CWG), I had lost out basically due to fatigue. Here, till the last day, I was mentally fresh.”

Sharath puts that down to focus on recovery and meticulous preparation that started nine months before the July-August Games. He had charted out crammed training sessions—runs from 6-6.45am, TT from 7.30-9.30am, fitness from 11am-12.30pm—in anticipation of what eventually panned out in those couple of weeks. In Birmingham, recovery became paramount—30 minutes post dinner daily for contrast bath in the pool apart from stretching—and visiting the physio first thing in the morning “to get the body activated".

“There’s also mental fatigue. How do you recover from that?” Sharath asks. “Physical recovery is the process for mental recovery too.”

It ensured Sharath carried that confidence and remained “in the zone” as his battles came thick and fast. Even when he had literally no time, like when a couple of days involved six matches.

“There were times when I finished one match, left the racquet there, ran to the call area, walked back in for another match, left the racquet and went back again,” Sharath says.

“I remember after the team semi-final against Nigeria, their captain Aruna Quadri came up to me and said, 'How the ***k are you so relaxed, man?' I said, ‘I know I’ve done my job in terms of preparations, this is just the end result’. That was my zone. That’s where the confidence was.”

That belief also stemmed from winning a 10th singles national title and a bronze at the WTT Contender in Doha earlier in the year. “Those were indicators that gave me the feel-good factor. In July, we had the European WTT series where I purposely didn’t want to peak because at my age I can’t peak twice in two months. But after those two tournaments, I felt like I was playing well, feeling good, was in the right spot.”

While the mixed doubles win with Sreeja hogged headlines, it was his singles triumph that carried greater significance, coming after a gap of three Games.

“I shot to fame because of that singles win in 2006. Again this time, a lot of people watched me play because of our mixed doubles win. It was the best thing to have happened to table tennis. Then, of course, the recognition followed,” Sharath says, referring to the Khel Ratna award.

The volume of medals was crucial too—four of the Indian TT contingent’s five medals in Birmingham featured Sharath—on the back of the eight-medal 2018 CWG and the administrative mess at that point, with players going to court in the leadup over selection issues.

“It was quite tough for all of us. The focus was not on table tennis,” he says. “I wasn’t sure if we’d be able to match what we did in 2018, but at least in this CWG I was able to get that (medal count) up there. If we had not, then table tennis, especially with all the stuff that was already happening, would have been in more trouble.”

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