Manika, Sreeja and the need to ‘evolve’ their game

bombay: endure yr, amerindic women’s tabulate tennis had walked into uncharted territory. At the Paris Olympics, Manika Batra and Sreeja Akula became the first Indian paddlers to reach as far as the round of 16 in singles. The women’s team made it to the quarter-finals there, before going one better at the Asian TT Championships to grab a bronze medal taking down South Korea.

This year, the team crashed out of the home Asian TT Team Championships in the quarter-finals after being taken down by Singapore.

The slide from the unparalleled surge of the overall team reflects the individual fortunes of its two headline acts in Paris. Manika and Sreeja aren’t exactly in a freefall, but neither are they soaring higher.

India’s top two woman paddlers have been a constant in the world’s top 50 for a couple of years now - Manika even for longer. Apart from a brief period after the Olympics when Sreeja touched a career-high 21 and Manika was 25, the two have largely circled around the 25 to 50 rankings range. They’ve knocked on the top 15-20 door without having broken it so far.

This year, Sreeja has shuffled from 29 (Jan 2025) to 33 (March) to 37 (July) to 38 (present), and Manika from 28 to 27 to 49 to 43, with both showing indifferent form on the WTT tour.

“For Manika and Sreeja, some good results are needed, of course, but also some new implementations, new skills, in order to evolve their game,” said India’s head coach Massimo Costantini.

“If their game doesn’t evolve, they will be stuck. Sooner or later, they will be stuck. And the young are coming up.”

This need to evolve goes beyond the oft-highlighted long-pimped rubbers used by both paddlers, and into specific changes to their game, body or mind. For the experienced Italian coach, the first step lies in Manika, 30, and Sreeja, 27, understanding “the importance of evolving”.

“Once they feel the importance, we have to sit across the table and start thinking what needs to be done,” said Costantini. “Maybe they need to give up something to invest in something else, or push more in some other direction. It requires time. A coach needs time to invest and make appropriate changes.”

Sreeja’s personal coach, Somnath Ghosh, reckons his pupil tends to get stuck against players who “attack hard”. And the key to solving that puzzle lies in sharpening her forehand attack and backhand block.

“She’s good at attacking 1-2 balls with her forehand, but not 4-5 balls consistently. She will have to better that,” said Ghosh. “And she has to control her backhand block better, especially against players who attack hard like the Japanese and a few Europeans, against whom her ball goes up.”

Part of that evolving process, said Ghosh, could also be to learn flipping the racquet during rallies, something Manika does. Ghosh said such changes will take time, and the help of sparring partners from abroad that can spend a good few months in Hyderabad where Sreeja trains.

“In India, we have good players but male players don’t practice with women, and most women players have the pimpled rubber. So we’re trying to get partners from outside who can play with Sreeja for 6-7 months consistently. We want to try this before the 2028 Olympics,” said Ghosh.

From the start of 2024 when she was ranked 89 to entering the top 25, Sreeja’s growth has been undeniable. What hasn’t helped her step up to the next level, though, is the frequent run-in with injuries. A long-standing shoulder issue kept her out of the Asian team event in Bhubaneswar last week.

“We’ll have to try and fix that,” said Ghosh. “She works hard on her fitness, and still if she keeps getting injured, it means there is something wrong in her body.”

Compared to Sreeja, Manika has been in the top 50 and 30 for a more extended and consistent period. She has also not shied away from shaking things up in the past. After a forgettable 2022 Commonwealth Games, she teamed up with new coach Aman Balgu and got her forehand attacks to launch more frequently.

In Bhubaneswar, Singapore’s 166th-ranked Tan Zhao Yun rattled Manika to a surprising defeat with her defensive forehand chops.

Costantini believes pressing the button of change, in any facet of the game, will require an all-in mindset.

“As an extreme example, you say I’m going to change my rubber, or maybe my blade. Such things require strong determination. If you hesitate and say, ‘oh, what if I change my racquet and I’m not able to play what I used to before’. That will be the wrong way. So it should be a 100 percent decision, and then you accept that you need time to work on it,” said the head coach.

“It’s a little complicated, but we’ll see how it goes.”

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