It was a part G. Sathiyan had by no means skilled earlier than.
Having loved a career-high of World rating of 24 in 2019, Sathiyan was going by means of considered one of the worst occasions of his skilled desk tennis profession 4 years later.
A extreme ache to his decrease again and knee in the latter half of 2023 was threatening to tug him down particularly with the Paris Olympics qualification looming massive.
Prioritising tournaments over recovery, Sathiyan performed in fairly just a few WTT Contender and Star Contender occasions, solely to lose early in lots of occasions which made issues worse.
In March 2024, the 31-year-old received again his sagging confidence when he bagged the males’s singles crown at the WTT Feeder match in Beirut, defeating Chuang Chih-Yuan of Taipei, the high seed, in the remaining. The title, his fourth general and first since 2021, pushed him up by 34 locations whereby he reached No. 60 in the world rankings. He is the second ranked Indian now behind Sharath (WR 35) in males’s singles International rankings.
Devastated
“I was devastated,” admitted the Commonwealth and Asian Games medallist, on the accidents. “This was the first time I was saddled with a major injury in my career.”
The better part about Sathiyan is his keenness to enhance and introspect when the chips are down that separates him from others.
Sitting down with his coach S. Raman, he dug deep into his sport to grasp what he was doing fallacious. Separately, he made a aware determination to maneuver to Primal Patters, headed by famend health coach Shanker Basu and backed by physio Navneeth. Slowly and steadily, Sathiyan began to reap the rewards.
“I started to focus more on recovery, an area I neglected as a youngster. I started doing ice bath, massages, strength training and physiotherapy. My routine was recovery, fitness and practice. Once I started to do that regularly, I was feeling better and then I started to build on it,” defined Sathiyan.
Basu additionally tweaked the routines that Sathiyan was used to until then. “I changed my warm-up routines. My rehabilitation and fitness program, too, changed. I focused more on my diet and realised the need to be more disciplined when you travel. Of course, on court I was focused. Off-court I made some changes,” added Sathiyan.
Back to fundamentals
Raman, too, has performed an enormous half in Sathiyan’s profession. The 54-year-old Olympian encourages Sathiyan to problem his teaching type and there are cases of the two difficult one another on the greatest technique to go ahead so far as method and health had been involved.
“Raman sir went back to the basics. Nowadays, youngsters have become aggressive and the key was to adapt. Now, players world ranked in 100-150 challenge the top players. They are not scared. We worked on adding some skills and rectify quite a few technical mistakes related to timing and speed,” mentioned Sathiyan.
In the singles semifinals in opposition to Chuang in Beirut, Sathiyan was on high of his sport in counter-attacks and blocks. During lengthy rallies, the Indian was constant and was wonderful in defence and in unleashing forehand high spin winners when it warranted.
Sathiyan defeated Manav Thakkar in the remaining and the subsequent day with out a break, he performed in the WTT Feeder II in Beirut, the place he reached the semifinals.
Sathiyan revealed that he was capable of play back-to-back tournaments due to the coaching routines offered by Sankar. “There was not even a day’s break. After the WTT Beirut I event, I started playing the next day. Six days of continuous playing. I have not done it before, playing in two Feeder events back-to-back,” he mentioned.
The chronology
Explaining the chronology of his harm and recovery, Sathiyan mentioned: “After the Senior Nationals in December 2023, I started to do proper rehab and went back to do basic work on my technical flaws, which took time. Then, I started to work on my game mentally and physically. That time was the critical phase of qualifying period for the Paris Olympics. After January, I started to feel better about my game. I was getting into my rhythm at the World team championships in February in Busan. I was playing well in the Singapore Smash tournament, too. In fact, I was leading by two games to one and 5-1 up in the third game against France’s Lillian Bardet in the first qualifying round before I lost the game and the match. After January, I was in a much better shape physically. And I had better clarity.”
According to Sathiyan, the adjustments in the factors system by World Table Tennis additionally performed a component in his rankings happening. “WTT announced in January that only points accrued from June 2023 will stand and not the usual two-year period,” he mentioned.
Sathiyan additional emphasised that WTT stopped permitting any window for coaching in its calender in contrast to earlier occasions when there was a window for coaching and follow that helped gamers to recoup.
“This was a new challenge for us. We had to adapt and hence do training in-between tournaments,” he mentioned.
The final three years, mentioned Sathiyan, has been continuous with main tournaments. With three occasions—Tokyo Olympics (2021), Commonwealth Games (2022), Asian Games (2023) and now the Paris Olympics (2024)—he mentioned, there was hardly any time for recovery, considered one of the many causes that led to him being injured. “This was the first time that three massive occasions occurred yearly, 2021, ‘22 & ‘23. It was a huge challenge. I am happy that I have recovered and progressed well,” he said.
Whenever Sathiyan has lost his form, he has relied on smaller events to bail him out. After a poor show in the Tokyo Olympics, he won the ITTF Czech Open as the top seed. This time, when he was again down and out, he took part in the WTT Feeder event in Beirut and won it.
On the rationale of participating in lower tier events when he loses his touch, Sathiyan replied, “I think for me, the concept is to play more matches. In Feeder events, you get to play more matches. In Contender events, the level is high and you directly play at a high level. When you are not in good form, you either play a tournament in India or play a Feeder event. That’s the greatest technique to progress and achieve confidence.”
However, he mentioned Feeder occasions have gotten more durable as gamers exterior the high 30 in the world play and the competitors is excessive. “The Feeder events concepts have changed. Though there are no World top 30 players, six players from 31 to 50 are allowed. Feeders are as good as Contender events,” he insisted.
The two-time Senior National champion desires to enhance his singles rankings and enter the high 50 in the world to brighten his probability of sealing a spot in the males’s group occasion for Paris Olympics. That, although, won’t be simple. Even although Sathiyan is ranked two behind Sharath in International rankings, he’s ranked 5 in Indian (home) rankings and are two others respiration down Sathiyan’s throat. “It’s a tight race in men’s. Manav Thakkar (63), Harmeet Desai (66) and I are neck-to-neck in world rankings. It’s a healthy competition. We will know the composition of the team when the Table Tennis Federation of India announces it on May 16,” he mentioned.
Sathiyan can be eyeing a berth in combined doubles with Manika Batra for the Paris Olympics when the two-day World combined doubles Olympic qualification match begins on April 11 in Havirov (Czech Republic). “We are ranked 16 in the Race to Olympics rankings. Four pairs from Havirov will directly qualify. The qualification (for Olympics) looks difficult. We are confident of putting up a fight,” he mentioned.
Setbacks have at all times received the greatest out of Sathiyan. He will likely be hoping he’ll come out, unscathed.
