Table tennis coach ‘satisfied’ despite failure to strike gold at SAG
Sri Lanka Mixed Doubles team in action at the SAG
The Sri Lanka table tennis team had high hopes of winning gold medals at the 13th South Asian Games (SAG) in Nepal but the team failed to achieve their target. They finished with an average performance, winning one silver and six bronze medals.
“Though we failed to win more medals for the country, I am satisfied with the performance of our players who competed with minimum facilities,” team coach Buddhika Dikkumbura told the Sunday Times.
However, he was not satisfied with the facilities provided by the host nation for conducting practice sessions.
The Sri Lanka Table Tennis Association recruited a Belarus coach Aleksey Yefremov just ahead of the SAG.
“Only with hard practice and concentration only a player is able to give his best,” said the Belarus coach who said that Sri Lanka’s standard in TT can be ranked on par with India and Malaysia.
Dikkumbura pointed out that we could have done much better if not for most of the players falling ill after reaching Nepal as it was really cold over there. The Sri Lanka team faced another blow as one of players contracted dengue to be out of the tournament.
“The team was all out to win more gold medals and they practiced hard with the available resources. They did a lot of hard practice and physical training to keep them in topping condition for the Games. It is always the opponent who capitalizes on the slightest mistake to turn tables in their favour,” he said.
Dikkumbura said even though the Belarus coach was with the team only for three weeks, his advice on technique and pattern of play helped the team a lot. “In this short time the foreign coach analysed the players’ weaknesses and strong points, and advised them to work hard on the weak points and improve more on the strong points. His guidance played a major role with our players and they feel sorry for not achieving their goal at the games,” he said.
When asked about the output of players like Udaya Ranasinghe, who was flown from the United States, the coach said it is difficult to point out as every player combined well and did their best to make their motherland proud.
The Lankan team lost lot of practice time as the host nation did not provide enough tables for the purpose. “International players are used to prepare for matches by doing table warm up training for one hour with half hour rest. But sad to say we didn’t have even one table for warm up,” he said.
“Amidst all these setbacks our team, though failing to win gold, won a silver and six bronze medals at the Games. As for the three schoolchildren – one fell ill with dengue, but the other two never seemed nervous and faced the stiff opposition with confidence to prove they were worthy selections. We took the best available team for the Games with two months of training,” he said.
The coach went on to say that Sri Lanka’s best performance at the Games was against the TT power house of Asia, the Indians who were made to sweat for victory in the team event which went to the wire. The brave Lankan paddlers matched India in every department of the game but unfortunately ended up as losing.
“Though we failed to win any gold medals, we can be satisfied with the overall performance of the players who braved the cold conditions at the foot of the Himalayas. Even our complaints to the hosts fell on deaf ears as no action was taken,” said Dikkumbura.