Bringing a table tennis board home during the COVID-19 phase probably became the most valuable investment, as Divyanshi defeated three Chinese players on the way to winning India’s first gold medal in 36 years at the Asian Youth Table Tennis Championships.

India won a gold medal at the under-15 event in 1989, when the tournament was held in New Delhi. On Tuesday in Tashkent, the paddler from Kandivali in Mumbai defeated China’s Zhu Qihi 4-2 in the final to continue her rapid rise in the sport.

The gold medal comes a few months after Divyanshi was thrown at the deep end in Chennai, where she made her senior debut at the WTT Star Contender event at the age of 14.

In the first round, she defeated World No.64 and Olympian Giorgia Piccolin of Italy. She also won a doubles silver medal at the 2023 ITTF World Youth Championships, along with WTT Contender Youth titles at under-13, under-15, and under-17 categories.

After the TT board arrived at her home, Divyangshi used to practice for nearly five hours every day with her sister and father. But at her first Nationals, Divyanshi lost early, prompting her father to try to find out what went wrong. He was told that it would take 3-4 years for his daughter to reach an elite level.

“When she lost in qualifying, I asked the coach how we could get better. I was told that it would take a long time, and things don’t move so fast. I couldn’t digest this and took matters into my own hands,” says Rahul Bhowmick, her father, while speaking to the Indian Express.

Rahul, who is the regional CEO of ISS Global Forwarding, decided to bring a Power Pong Omega Robot home to help develop Divyanshi’s game.

“One of the things that I noticed in the success of Chinese paddlers was their ball control. So, we used the robot to work on specific scenarios where she was having trouble. You can program the robot to a high-spin, high-loop setting and then hit thousands of such balls in practice. The key was to repeat it time and again until she perfected it,” explained Rahul.