Legendary Indian paddler Sharath Kamal says he is in the best phase of his career and is eyeing a medal in the upcoming Asian Games, scheduled to be held from 18th August in Indonesia.
“We are in the final phase of our preparations, the last two months which will see us play a lot of matches, UTT is here, after this the Australia and Korea Open which are Super Series tournaments,” Sharath told PTI as reported by Times of India.
“Preparation has been right on track, confidence is high among the squad. But our main aim at the Asian Games is to get a gold. We’ve always gone on to the quarterfinals but have faltered at that hurdle as it’s really tough. But this year, if we have a good draw and given our confidence, on a particular day, we can beat the best in the world,” the 7 times Commonwealth medallist said.
The 35-years-old from Chennai has won 2 gold medals in 2006 Melbourne CWG, 1 gold and 1 bronze in 2010 Delhi CWG and 1 gold, 1 silver and 1 bronze in Gold Coast CWG.
“The World Championship was my career’s best performance. The way I played there, all the players from around the world came up to me and congratulated me for the touch I was in. I made the highest number of points that an individual could ever make, even more than the World Number 1 Ma Long or Timo Boll,” he said.
“We finished 13th compared to 25th last time. A lot of people have a wrong impression that the World C’ships weren’t as great for us but the comparison is too big, in terms of being the world champions from the CWG champions. We had a fantastic run there, personally, moving from 25 to 13 is a great achievement,” he added.
Sharath Kamal says he is in the best phase of his career and believes that he will achieve his career best ranking in the next 3-4 months. Sharath’s best rank came in May 2015 when he was ranked 32nd in the world.
Sharath is captaining the Warriors TTC in the ongoing UTT league.
The veteran paddler has been a great servant of Indian Table Tennis for over a decade and despite growing age he still continues to be the best in the country.
“Table Tennis is my identity, so I will stay connected to the sport but we will have to wait for some more time before I go onto the other side of things,” he said.
