Sutirtha-Ayhika: A chemistry brewing in TT doubles

A first World Table Tennis (WTT) Contender title for Indian table tennis this year may have come from unexpected quarters, but Sutirtha Mukherjee and Ayhika Mukherjee were hardly short on belief while scripting one upset after another in Tunis.

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It wasn’t completely out of the blue though. Teaming up and playing doubles a bit more frequently on the WTT tour last year, the pair made the final of the 2022 WTT Contender Muscat in February-March — they went past the top-seeded Diaz sisters of Puerto Rico — after just one tournament together.

If that was a little sneak peek, last week was a stunning giant-killing show from the Indians in beating the world No. 4 Korean pair of Jeon Jihee and Shin Yubin in the semi-final and the Japanese teenaged duo of Miwa Harimoto and Miyuu Kihara in the final on Sunday.

“We were overjoyed after winning," Ayhika said. “We had the belief that we can go all the way. We started playing doubles in tournaments properly only from last year, and it took us one tournament to get into the top 50 (women’s doubles rankings). We knew that we are an effective pair and if we play more together, we could make a difference.”

Currently ranked 36th in the world, the Tunis title is expected to increase their combined rankings. Though the second-best women’s doubles pair in the country — which clinched the 2022 National Games title — Sutirtha and Ayhika were not selected in India's doubles line-up for the 2022 Commonwealth Games or the World Table Tennis Championships in Durban last month, where the combination of Manika Batra-Archana Kamath and Sreeja Akula-Diya Chitale was fielded. Sutirtha did, however, compete in singles at the Worlds.

It will be interesting to see which of these players gets the nod in the women’s squad for the Asian Games in September-October as per Table Tennis Federation of India’s (TTFI) selection policy. According to the criteria, 50% weightage is given to national performance, 40% to international performance and 10% to the selection committee's judgement. As things stand, Sutirtha and Ayhika are ranked above Diya and Sreeja (58th) in the world chart with a WTT title to show. Domestically, as per TTFI's 2022 rankings for women headed by Sreeja, Sutirtha is No. 2 while Ayhika is No. 5. Manika and Archana, though ranked 13th in the world as a pair, are 31st and 11th respectively in the individual national chart.

TTFI secretary-general Kamlesh Mehta said the selection call on Asian Games will be done “in the next few days”.

The former stalwart labelled the title won by Sutirtha-Ayhika as a “fantastic achievement”. “It's a new pair, and the results are very encouraging," Mehta said. “That they won against the Korean and Japanese pairs, which are traditionally very strong in doubles, is great. Our doubles overall has shown some good signs.”

From the same city of Naihati in West Bengal and with the same surnames, Sutirtha and Ayhika have a lot more in common. They came from the same academy in their younger days, and now train with Soumyadeep Roy and Poulomi Ghatak at their centre. The on-table chemistry, therefore, did not take too long to brew.

“We are like sisters off the table,” Ayhika said. “We have been playing together since childhood and so we know each other very well and can read each other's minds while playing. Our bonding is super strong.”

Ayhika, 26, has also made steady progress in singles. At the Jammu nationals in March this year, she reached the semi-finals where, incidentally, she lost to Sutirtha. At the UTT National Ranking Championships earlier this month, she won the singles title beating Diya in the final. Ayhika got past young Diya again in the Tunis qualifying round before beating China's Wang Xiaotong in the Round of 32. Greater results though awaited in doubles.

“I played quite good in singles as well but to win my first WTT title in doubles, I am really happy,” she said, adding that they will play two more WTT events in Europe. “It will boost our rankings and confidence going forward.”

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