Express News Service
CHENNAI: When S Raman took to coaching in the mid-2000s after a successful career playing Table Tennis — Commonwealth and South Asian Games gold medalist, an Olympian and an Arjuna awardee — he wanted to help players achieve things he couldn’t. Almost 15 years later, he was conferred with the Dronacharya Award for his excellence in coaching and developing world-class paddlers.
But the journey hasn’t been a cakewalk. “I have learnt quite a bit as a coach than as a player,” Raman told this daily. “I’ve been into coaching for 15 years, so there is a lot of learning. We, when I say we, players I have worked with have grown from strength to strength. What I couldn’t achieve, the players I have coached have achieved more than that.”
For any athlete to achieve glory in their respective sport, a good rapport with the coach is required. It becomes even more imperative in an individual sport. Having worked with numerous athletes over the years, Raman has had his share of disagreements over methods and strategies over the years. However, he feels that those were just in the early days, and once the players started trusting his ability to deliver, there hadn’t been any issues.
“Definitely, there will be some adjustments. You don’t learn and stay in the same course; you use those learnings and keep moving higher and better. The goal post has never changed, the pathway, I wouldn’t say changed, but realigned to make ways for all those learnings to come into play.”
With Table Tennis evolving over the years, Raman has had to adapt and let go of certain things to make progress. “There are a lot of things that happened on the technical side than you have on the game front. Also the ball has been changed, there is a different element of speed and spin involved. So, we need to muscle up a little bit more; on the physical side we have to do a bit more and we did that. We need to, sort of, prepare and build up to the changes from time to time.”
When asked about his coaching philosophy, he said that the fundamental approach has to be based on the players’ strength. “While you try to do that, you need to find different approaches to different types of players. But the foundation should be on your player’s strength; not moving away from your strength point of view and then trying to take a little different variant for different players,” said Raman adding that one needs to be open and clear about doing the small variations to achieve their goals.
However, things don’t always go as planned in sports and both the players and coaches are aware of it. Raman cites the recent World Table Tennis Championships as an example where his star athlete G Sathiyan came in touching distance with a medal before losing in the third round. He was not there at the venue due to Visa related issues, and seemed confident that he could have helped Sathiyan turn it around against Nigeria’s Quadri Aruna. “He (Sathiyan) knows I can make a good game plan that fits into his bill and make it work. There are some rare occasions when it doesn’t work, but they are very few. Even when it doesn’t, we have plan B and C. We will try and see if it works.”
Raman started a ‘High Performance Center’ in Chennai for the athletes to train in their own space without any restriction a few years ago. He said that the coaching center has been a ‘game-changer’ as it provides unlimited access with ‘European standards’ to train. It also came in handy, especially during the pandemic when most of the facilities were shut down. Despite all the training players had at his training center, Raman stresses the importance of match-practice, which has not been the same since the Covid-19 pandemic struck.
Looking at the performance of the Indian paddlers at the Tokyo Olympics, Raman said that the overall result was good for India. “I think Manika (Batra) did exceptionally well. Also, Sutirtha (Mukherjee) and Sharath (Kamal Achanta) took one match, that was good. Sathiyan missed out, nevertheless, they have done well in the World Championships. There is a big hope that Manika and Sathiyan can combine together and win the World Championships and Olympics medals.”
He feels that the more the athletes get to play the better prepared they will be for the Paris Olympics. “You cannot assure a medal. All you can do is give yourself the best chance to be prepared in the lead up to the Olympics.”
Coming back to the award, Raman said that although he does not work for these rewards, it felt good to have some recognition for his work. He is hopeful that this would motivate many former players to enter full-time coaching as ‘at the end of the day with good committed full-time coaches only we can make a difference.’
One can say with some certainty that Raman has made a difference and the sport is better for it.
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