Mumbai: Sreeja Akula remembers December 2023 as a period of frustration. She had struggled to win matches in the main draw of table tennis tour events. And her target of breaking into the top 50 in world rankings remained a hurdle too high – she spent most of the season lingering in the 80s and 90s.
A year on, Akula is looking back at a season where she competed beyond expectations. She won three tour events, including a WTT Contender title – the first Indian to achieve that. She beat China’s then world No.2 Wang Yidi at the Team World Championships, and was a part of the Indian women’s team that medalled at the Asian Championships for the first time, claiming bronze. Along the way, she became only the second Indian to reach the round of 16 in singles at the Paris Olympics.
To top it all, she reached a career high of 21 – the best-ever ranking achieved by an Indian in singles.
“This time last year I was very unhappy with my performance,” she told HT. “I was reaching the main draw, but winning a match there was proving too difficult. There was a lot of frustration.
“But this year was the best for me.”
After the struggles of 2023, the 26-year-old from Hyderabad started to make a number of changes to her game. Physically, there was more focus on strength and conditioning. Technically though, she had to find a way to break away from “stagnating”.
“I had to become more consistent,” she said. “On my forehand, I started to add more variations, changing the spin with each shot. I also started to focus more on placement rather than hitting with power.”
The decision was also made to take a measured step back to try and achieve greater strides forward.
The Indian federation, she said, was sponsoring players to compete at the WTT Contender event in Doha at the start of the year. Akula and her coach Somnath Ghosh, however, decided to instead play at a rung lower, in the Feeder circuit. She opted to play at the Corpus Christi Feeder event in Texas.
From struggling to win a main draw match the previous year, Akula started 2024 by winning the title.
“I went with an open mind and without any expectations of myself,” said Akula, now ranked 23. “We thought I should go for the Feeder event to try and get some confidence and momentum. That proved to be a big win for me.”
In March, she won another Feeder event, in Beirut, and started to grow in confidence to the point that she went on to win the Contender event in Lagos in June.
The win had come at an ideal time for her, especially with the 2024 Paris Olympics around the corner. But she also started to struggle with a groin injury.
Akula took a little time off to work on the strain while preparing for the Olympics, but ended up travelling to Paris with the niggle that later proved to be much sinister in nature.
“I got an MRI done at the Olympics village and got to know it was a stress fracture,” she recalled.
Akula returned home from the Olympics with the high of a commendable performance and a new career high rank. But with strict orders to rest for six weeks.
The return was slow and Akula was a bit tentative at the table, missing the match sharpness she enjoyed before the injury. But she was prepared to take it in her stride.
“The main thing for me was that I got to play at the Olympics, so in a way the injury came at the right time,” she said. “I wanted to take it in a positive way.
“I played a few events at the end of the year but the results were not great. I expected that though, because I wasn’t fully fit.”
But now she is.
The year gone by has made a big difference in her career. Now, she is ready to storm into the new season.
