Sharath hopes to rise with eye on Paris

Shuttling between Dusseldorf and Lausanne this week, part of Sharath Kamal's mind is back in Chennai. In his home city that is reeling in the aftermath of Cyclone Michaung, he has his family and five young paddlers staying put at his residence with sporadic electricity. "The good thing is they trained a bit in our home set-up on Tuesday," Sharath says over phone from Lausanne.

- Rutvick Mehta

The veteran Indian table tennis player himself was in Vijayawada - the Andhra city was also affected until a few days ago for the National Ranking Championships. Right after his quarter-final exit there, the 41-year-old flew to Germany, and courtesy a delayed flight went straight from the airport to play a match for his club Borussia Dusseldorf over the weekend.

The next couple of months, he says, "is the most important time for me". His four-week off-season training done, Sharath hopes to find some "match sharpness" playing in Germany and sparring with quality players. He'll then turn up for a flurry of competitions: the nationals later this month and 3-4 WTT events in January before February's World Team Championships where eight team spots for the 2024 Paris Olympics will be on offer. The reigning Commonwealth Games singles champion, now the India No. 4 and down to 107 in the world rankings, has turned his entire focus towards that.

"That's something that is important for me in terms of team qualification. All the tournaments that I play before that, I need to raise my personal ranking so that the team has a better position. And if we make it to the last 16 there, I will put all that I have into that one match to make it to the quarter-finals," he said.