Devesh Karia in Indian team for Vietnam meet

AHMEDABAD: India No. 3 Devesh Karia of Income Tax Bhavnagar has been selected to represent India in the 29th Open Golden Racket International Table Tennis Tournament to be held at Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, from July 23 to 26. This is Karia’s third international trip with the Indian team within a month after he participated in the Japan and Korean Table Tennis Championship.
The other member in the men's team is Abhishek Yadav of Rajasthan while in women's section, the Table Tennis Federation of India has picked Mouma Das (West Bengal), Senora D'Souza (Maharashtra) and Manika Batra (Delhi) to represent the country.
Karia is showing rich vein of form of late and his dream of representing India in big events like Olympics, world championship and the Commonwealth Games looks pretty imminent. This has actually been a second coming of sorts for the Bhavnagar-based Income Tax inspector.
Karia was ranked among the top eight paddlers in the country till four years ago. He represented India in the junior and youth categories and even featured in the Indian team for the Asian Championships, but among the reserves. Like all elite sport persons he too suffered a slump and was almost out of the national radar till he won his first major national title in Indore early in the year. He repeated the feat again in Agra few weeks later. In the last National games in Kerala Karia had a rich haul of one gold, one silver and two bronze. And now Karia is once again seeing reasons to believe that he can consistently play for India at the highest level, which has been his dream since he started playing table tennis.
"I played for the Indian junior and youth team and I always dreamt of representing my country in events like the Asian Games or the Commonwealth Games or the Olympics. But I lost my form and I had to start all over again," Karia had said soon after the National Games.
"I have worked very hard for the last two years and finally I am getting the desired results. It all started from Indore and for that I had to wait for 15 years but I didn't lose heart," Karia had said.
Karia is fortunate to have state mate Harmeet Desai, who has been a regular in the Indian team for the last couple of years; former India player Pathik Mehta and Gujarat's number one paddler Jignesh Jaiswal as his practice partners.
Karia's stint under the North Korean coaches Ri Hyong and Kim Song at the Sports Authority of Gujarat's (SAG) residential academy in Bhavnagar too is doing wonders to his game now.
"I knew that I had the game to compete at the highest level but it is all about putting what you practice to play," Karia had said.
This is however just the beginning of Karia's second innings after the break.