Exclusive: 'Table Tennis is one of the most intellectual sports' says Jay Modak on his journey

It has been a happy last few years for Indian table tennis as the nation has picked up as a major force in the sport. While renowned names like Sharath Kamal and Manika Batra have made names for themselves, the nation has also been blessed with some great coaches. One of the rising coaching stars in the Indian table tennis fraternity is Jay Modak.

Jay spoke exclusively with WION as he reflected on his journey while helping U Mumba win the recently concluded season six of the Ultimate Table Tennis (UTT).

Jay has been a pioneer in the rising bunch of Indian paddlers including Taneesha Kotecha, Kushal Chopda and others. Through his intense coaching skills and the Jay Modak Table Tennis Academy, he has helped several names rise on the national and international stage.

When did your journey as a table tennis coach start?

My father used to play table tennis, he's played seven senior nationals before. He is also part of the Maharashtra Association and used to and used to play with me when I started my journey 16 years ago.

In 2010 was the last I played in India before I shifted to do my Master's in Entrepreneurship. This was the time I was given a part-time offer to work as a coach in table tennis. I used to do part-time coaching in Nottingham for about a year and a half. After I completed my degree, my parents were like come back to India.

So it was at this time I started pursuing sports as a career and made table tennis coaching a part of me.

However, it was not until 2019 that I made table tennis coaching my mainstream profession while I was also handling our family business.

Can reflect on your transition into professional coaching despite numerous challenges?

I feel table tennis is one of the most intellectual sports that one plays because the amount of reaction time that is there and the amount of variations of strokes that are involved in it are humongous, to be honest. But if you speak to anyone in life, everyone will say, I have played table tennis in my life.

So they have played either in college or at some farmhouse or somewhere or the other as a leisure thing and they feel that movements are so easy, the table is so small, why do you have to work or why do you need to work so hard and things like that. But it's a very technical sport.

The COVID-19 period was challenging for us, but during that period as well we concentrated on our goal. Our determination as coaches is to get the best out of players and the results are doing the talking.

Manush, Diya, Satyan and Shreeja are some of the promising names that have started to make headlines recently.

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What was the feeling like to win a gold medal in the South Asian games while you sat in the coaching role?

South Asian, to be honest, is gold medals for India throughout, to be honest. So that was one of the first times I was representing the country as a coach. So it was definitely a proud moment. And generally, we dominate the South Asian Games. It is the Asians where we had the historic 2015. That was more, what do you say, a highlight or one of the peaks of that phase because we won an under-15 bronze over there. But the other highlight was when we were part of the 2023 World Junior Championships.

How do you think India can break China’s monopoly in table tennis?

It is a one-step-at-a-time process, to be honest. Right now, if you see, we get one-off results against China. So every 7 or 8 matches we play, we win once. In each of the categories, if you see either it may be junior or senior. But to be honest, the major difference between us and them is it's a religion for them over there. The grassroots levels are extremely strong, so we’ll have to compete with them at their grassroots levels before we can crack the code in the senior division.