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Before every game at the Tokyo Olympics, Sathiyan Gnanasekaran will have to spend long hours with his mobile phone. He will discuss the game plan and analyze opponents with his coach and former Olympian S Raman, who will be in Chennai after he was excluded from the final list of coaches traveling to Tokyo.
Raman, who has been coaching Sathiyan for a long time, expressed his disappointment over the “shocking” omission from the Indian table tennis team’s list. In an exclusive chat with Sportskeeda, he said, it was unprecedented and has left all their gameplans awry.
“I just got to know about this yesterday. I was not expecting anything like this. Sathiyan and I were sure we would go to the Tokyo Olympics. I was there with him during the 2018 Asian and Commonwealth Games, and the 2019 World Cup. I should have been there in Tokyo too,” the four-time national champion Raman said.
He added that they will now have to rely on technology to communicate and get the best out at the Tokyo Olympics.
“We can now only rely on technology. It will be challenging given the time difference and everything. But we need to find a way to it."
Sathiyan’s coach was amongst the shortlisted candidates to travel with the Indian team. The others were Soumyadeep Roy (Indian team coach) and Sanmay Paranjape (Manika Batra’s personal coach).
READ: Focus on reflexes, footwork to perform at optimum level, says Sathiyan Gnanasekaran
On the final list, though, Raman’s name went missing. The 52-year-old feels he is the best candidate to understand what is best for Sathiyan and the decision has left him stunned.
“He has been performing well. But now, at the Tokyo Olympics, he will have to deal with everything on his own. Earlier, I would help him sort out his priorities, and take care of unnecessary things. Now, Sathiyan will have to take care of his food, water, and training all by himself,” Raman said.
Sathiyan finds a solution to the setback for Tokyo Olympics
Sathiyan entered the top 25 in the world rankings in 2019 but has dropped down a little since then. He currently stands at 32 in the world rankings.
While Raman is worried about what will happen in Tokyo, Sathiyan has decided to stay calm and find a solution.
Hailing from an engineering background, he has put trust in technology to become his mentor and best friend in the Land of the Rising Robots.
Sathiyan says he will send videos of his opponents to “Raman sir” who will analyze them and send back a feedback with a detailed plan.
“What I generally do when my personal coach is not around is, I send Raman sir the videos of players I am about to play next and he in turn gives me a detailed plan by analyzing a lot. We have done this earlier,” a calm Sathiyan said.
Data analysis is one of the favorite subjects for both Raman and Sathiyan. In fact, Raman has also made an excel sheet, titled “MSD” – Match Summary Data Sheet – which he uses to analyze players.
READ: Indian paddlers won't go underprepared at Tokyo Olympics, says Sharath Kamal
“I use MSD to analyze players. It is an excel sheet I have, where I enter minute details of a match and a player. It would take me nearly 5-6 hours to do it. But now with data analysing softwares, it takes just 2 hours maximum.
Sathiyan continues to put trust in his trusted commander and believes it will all fall back in place.
“We have already made some plans. Now that, we just have one match per day, so it is easy for us to focus this way too. He will share detailed notes and his thoughts on my opponent and I go about executing it,” he says.
