Don’t allow her to wear shorts… people passed snide remarks: Table tennis star Sutirtha Mukherjee | Sport-others News

Sutirtha Mukherjee and Ayhika Mukherjee’s table tennis bronze was the first for India in women’s doubles at the Asian Games. But Ayhika’s injury at the start of the year could have jeopardised their immediate future as a pair. Ayhika experienced ‘unbearable’ back pain in January during a national ranking tournament in January. She was worried that her career was on the line.“The first thing that came to my mind was that my career was over. I’ve seen table tennis players being forced to retire due to lower back injuries. I thought the same would happen to me and there was no way I was going to bounce back from this,” Ayhika said.
Ayhika’s competitors, who are more like friends, rushed to comfort her. The news reached Sutirtha, her playing partner.
At the time, the pair had started to play well together. They had entered the final of World Table Tennis (WTT) Contender in Muscat and had strong performances in the WTT series.

Sutirtha assured Ayhika that she would wait for her to recover.
“All I told her is that she has to recover quickly and I’ll be waiting to play with her. She’s probably the best fighter I have seen and when she got such an unexpected injury, she just needed someone to comfort and motivate her,” Sutirtha said.
Best of friends
They started competing together at the international level only last year, but Sutirtha and Ayhika have much more in common than their surnames.
They hail from the same town – Naihati, not too far from Kolkata. They trained at the same academy in their hometown. Their mothers cajoled them to play table tennis.
“Where we are from… it’s an unsaid tradition that most girls learn singing or dancing. My mother, however, thought that I should do something different. There was a TT academy close and my mother decided to enroll me. It was the same academy that Sutirtha had been going to. We became friends then and have remained close ever since,” Ayhika says.
For Sutirtha, the initial days were a real struggle. Not in terms of the sport, but the societal pressure.
“Where I grew up, people were not that open-minded. They would pass snide remarks saying ‘don’t allow her to wear shorts, instead tell her to study and then get her married’. Thankfully, my parents didn’t len to any of that and gave me the freedom to play,” Sutirtha says.
A perfect partnership
Their first steps in the sport have similar storylines but it’s their different gameplay that’s made them a formidable force on the doubles circuit.
Sutirtha has mastered the use of her soft-pimpled rubber, which enables her to produce a lot of spin while serving and looping.
Ayhika uses long-pimpled rubber that reverses the spin, just like Manika Batra does.
Just as Manika has beaten top-ranked players some crafty use of her long-pimpled rubber that reverses the spin, Sutirtha too used the rubber to her advantage, even beating Manika on occasions.
So what happens is that Ayhika mostly controls the game, and sets up the point for Sutirtha to unleash her tremendous forehand.
“We complement each other very well because we know how to bring the best out of each other. She can hide my weaknesses with her strengths and I can do the same for her,” Ayhika says.
It was this gameplay that saw them achieve the biggest win of their career in the quarterfinal of the Asian Games, stunning China’s World No.2 doubles pair of Chen Meng and Wang Yidi.
While India have regularly reached the round of 16 and quarterfinal stages at the Asian Games, beating a Chinese pair was a stunning result, especially in China. Chen Meng and Wang Yidi have won 12 World Championship medals.
From Jakarta to Hangzhou
Ayhika and Sutirtha were both part of the 2018 Asian Games in Jakarta though they weren’t playing together.
However, post the Games, Ayhika’s form dropped tremendously, and till the Hangzhou Games, she hadn’t made the Indian team at any multi-sport event.
Sutirtha was in the news in the lead-up to the Tokyo Olympics. Her coach Soumyadeep Roy, who was the national coach at the time, was accused Manika of asking her to tank a match so that Sutirtha could make the cut for the Olympics. Soumyadeep was sacked as the national coach and there was an entire adminrative overhaul in the Table Tennis Federation of India (TTFI).
Despite what was going on around her, Sutirtha managed to stay strong and it was her triumph in the women’s singles at last year’s National Games that gave her renewed confidence. She even beat Manika en route to that final.
“I knew I had to become mentally strong. I couldn’t have done this alone though. My parents and my coach have played a huge role in silencing the noise around and allowing me to focus on my game,” Sutirtha said.
Just as the pair experienced a turnaround, Ayhika’s injury brought things to a standstill. She was doing her rehab but had no idea when she would return. Her ranking had dropped to No.15 in the country, the first time that happened since she started playing.
“I hadn’t been playing at these multi-sport events for a while so the thought of playing at the Asian Games never even crossed my mind. My focus was just on recovering properly,” Ayhika says.
In March, after being nudged a colleague, she decided to play at the National Championships where she represents the Reserve Bank of India. She didn’t expect much considering she hadn’t played for almost three months.
“I played really without practicing and we were team champions. In singles, I reached the semifinal. I decided that nothing was going to stop me,” she says.
After Ayhika rejoined the academy that Sutirtha went to, the duo concentrated on their doubles play. The results started showing almost immediately.
When they won the WTT Contender Tunis doubles title in June this year, their chances of making the Asian Games squad improved. The pair wasn’t good enough to represent India in last year’s Commonwealth Games in Birmingham but the TTFI recognised them as medal prospects and selected them for the trip to Hangzhou.
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“We defeated the top three pairs of the world in Tunisia earlier this year. There was no reason to believe we couldn’t beat higher-ranked opponents. In fact, we should’ve reached the final of the tournament but they played really well,” says Ayhika of their North Korean opponents Suyong and Sugyong, who they lost 4-3 to in what was a grueling encounter.
Chances at Olympics
After an Asian Games medal, it’s only natural to bring up their chances of a medal at the Paris Olympics next year. India has yet to win a medal in table tennis at the Olympics and Sutirtha and Ayhika know that winning an Asiad medal means all eyes will be on them.
After all, the competition at the Asian Games is as difficult as the Olympics. The Mukherjee duo, though, don’t want to think too far ahead. “First we have to qualify as a team. There’s a lot of work to be done but we’re confident of doing well,” they say.