Angsuman Bhattacharya, father, and coach of India's number one youth paddler Ankur Bhattacharya starts his new venture, introducing Ankur Lovely Table Tennis Academy in the Rajarhat area, North 24 Parganas. 

The goal is to produce more paddlers of international standard in the future. That is why, the coaching school has set its tagline, 'manufacturer of champions'. 

Angsuman Bhattacharya’s coaching career got a break after he was offered by Bangladesh Table Tennis in 2022 and again in 2023. 

Angsuman was the third table tennis coach from Bengal after Jayanta Pushilal and Mihir Ghosh to have worked as the chief coach in a foreign country. 

Under his coaching in 2022 Bangladesh team won a gold medal in the team event and two paddlers reached the last-four stage. 

Last year, under Angsuman’s guidance Bangladesh's senior national team acquired eight bronze and two silver medals in the South-Asian Youth championship, held in Arunachal Pradesh. 

This time following the Nepal Table Tennis Federation's wish 19 paddlers (boys, girls, men, and women) including the five boys who represented the Nepal senior national team and four girls who donned Nepal women’s shirts, have joined Ankur Lovely TT Academy on a 20-day program. 

Commenting on the Nepalese paddlers, Angsuman opined, “After watching Ankur’s performance Nepal Table Tennis Federation bosses decided to send these 19 paddlers here to our coaching school."

He continued, "These boys and girls have desire. But they need proper training to improve their fitness and technique and they need to be updated with rubbers mainly. Most of the paddlers use backdated rubbers.” 

This apart, T. Prabhat Sai from Andhra Pradesh, Chitrayu Chaitanya from Bihar, and Ritam Bhuyan have joined Bhattacharya’s coaching school. 

Prabhat Sai who was learning the game at Raman High Performance Centre in Chennai asserted, “I joined here only after watching Ankur’s consistency in the domestic and international competitions, and after practicing under the guidance of Angsuman sir I can say I am improving noticeably.” 

Angsuman sounded optimistic also about Indian paddlers’ performance in the forthcoming Paris Olympics. He opined, "India paddlers are in good form, especially after the recently-concluded World team championship. They have been able to establish the belief that we can also overcome China and Korea’s dominance in the game.”

Nilotpal Mukhopadhyay and his wife Priyanka are the heroes behind the scene whose enthusiasm helped Angsuman to introduce this coaching centre. They have come forward with infrastructural support.

Nilotpal commented, “Rajarhat area does not have a proper table tennis school. More importantly, we are privileged to have a teacher like Angsuman sir. We should not comment on Angsuman sir’s teaching. Ankur’s rise and consistent performance say it all. Our goal is also to produce more paddlers of international standard like Ankur.” 

Ankur Lovely Table Tennis Academy will be inaugurated on 14th April.