It was during the Covid pandemic in 2020 that Divyanshi Bhowmick’s father decided to bring a TT table home, hoping his daughter would take the interest in the sport she had shown at school to possibly something more significant.
That has turned out to be a worthwhile investment as Divyanshi defeated three Chinese players on the way to winning India’s first gold medal in 36 years at the Asian Youth Table Tennis Championships. India last won a gold medal at the Under-15 event in 1989, when the tournament was held in New Delhi. On Tuesday in Tashkent, the paddler from Kandivali in Mumbai defeated China’s Zhu Qihi 4-2 in the final to continue her rapid rise in the sport.
The gold medal comes a few months after Divyanshi was thrown at the deep end in Chennai, where she made her senior debut at the WTT Star Contender event at the age of 14. In the first round, she defeated World No.64 and Olympian Giorgia Piccolin of Italy. She has also won a doubles silver medal at the 2023 ITTF World Youth Championships, along with WTT Contender Youth titles at U13, U15 and U17 categories.
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“It’s a very important performance. She has beaten three Chinese players and the player whom she beat in the semifinals (Liu Ziling), had beaten her three times before,” says multiple-time former national champion Kamlesh Mehta, who is now the general secretary of the Table Tennis Federation of India (TTFI). “That player is very strong and also very comfortable with the style of play, the rubber that Bhowmick plays with. That itself speaks volume about her achievement.”
Divyanshi’s rise (she’s ranked 3rd in the world in U15, 14th in U17 and 24th in U19) in the sport started during the lockdown when her father decided to bring a TT table home. Soon she was playing for 4-5 hours everyday with her sister and father. But at her first Nationals, Divyanshi lost early, prompting her father to try and find out what went wrong. He was told that it would take 3-4 years for his daughter to reach an elite level.
“When she lost in qualifying, I asked the coach how we could get better. I was told that it would take a long time and things don’t move so fast. I couldn’t digest this and took matters in my own hands,” says Rahul Bhowmick.
Rahul, who is the regional CEO of ISS Global Forwarding, decided to bring a Power Pong Omega Robot home to help develop Divyanshi’s game.
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“One of the things that I noticed in the success of Chinese paddlers was their ball control. So, we used the robot to work on specific scenarios where she was having trouble. You can program the robot to a high-spin, high-loop setting and then hit a thousand of such balls in practice. The key was to repeat it time and again until she perfected it,” says Rahul.
Hard work pays dividends
The very next year, Divyanshi would win the 2021 Nationals. She also benefited from not working full-time under one coach, but shuttling between three different ones to work on different aspects of her game.
As if that wasn’t enough, her father started sending her to international WTT events hoping that her growth would be accelerated in an environment which included the best players. When the age-group titles started coming, so did the call to be part of the Indian team in 2022. In 2023, the doubles silver at the World Youth Championship followed.
“When we first put her on the international circuit in 2022-23, we must have spent lakhs making her play six tournaments abroad. There were travel and equipment costs with no sponsors. In India, parents have to outlay a lot of funds initially till you become a player in the national set-up,” says Rahul.
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Late in 2024, Divyanshi was signed up by Dani Sports Foundation, who had been scouting her and some other youth table tennis players since their U13 days.
“A lot of times what happens in the Indian ecosystem is that they play a lot of junior events. At U15 and U19 level, they keep on playing youth events. Our idea is to get some exposure internationally in senior events as well. It’s okay if you lose in the first round but understand the psyche of the elite players while you are still a growing youth star,” says Ekansh Gupta, CEO of Ultimate Table Tennis and an advisor at Dani Sports Foundation.
At the Asian Youth Championships, that step up to the senior level seemed to have worked in the Indian’s favour. Seeded second for the tournament, Divyanshi’s crowning moment came when she defeated Liu in a seven-game thriller in the semifinal. Her father said that the win came after India’s foreign coach Massimo Costantini strategized with them on how to take down the Chinese paddler.
“Massimo has helped her tremendously at the national camps. He adds value to her coaching. For this Asian Championship, he has been continuously practising with her, giving her inputs and settings for her matches,” adds Rahul.
