Help Vidhi buy equipment to train in this lockdown

Vidhi Upadhyay is absolutely consumed by her love for table tennis. Ask her any question and her intuitive answer would be table tennis. “Table tennis is a part of me. There’s nothing without it. If I am ever sick or my head is hurting, table tennis is my medicine”. The passion is understandable since being in a family full of table tennis players, that’s all she sees, hears or talks about. Her father runs a table tennis association in Porbandar and has coached 23 players to national glory. Her father has been her coach ever since she was 3 years old. She used to train with him from 6 am - 9pm and finish the rest of her work in the remaining time she had. Today, Vidhi is 21 years old and is already a west zone champion. She has played over 25 national championships and now aims to be in the all India team i.e. one step away from being a world champion. 

From the very start, Vidhi has been clear about her priority: pursuing her sport. A month before giving her board exams, she was playing her nationals in pondicherry. Most of her childhood, she has studied in the car or train just so she could play her matches in different parts of the country. Her dedication is commendable and inspirational, to say the least. 

However, during the lockdown, she hasn’t been able to train properly. Talking about her preparation for next year’s tournaments, Vidhi said, “We are managing some sort of training somehow but obviously it’s nowhere near the actual practice”. Even though equipment is an important aspect of table tennis and most of the finances in the sport are usually spent in buying table tennis balls, rackets and rubber covers, however, that isn’t Vidhi’s concern at the moment. In order to be properly trained for an international match, it is important for a player to understand and tackle different game variations. Since playing with different opponents isn’t possible in the lockdown, Vidhi’s training is lacking the element of versatility. Explaining her problem she says, “Table tennis is a game with a lot of variations. You can’t practice it alone. You need opponents with different games to practice these variations.” For this reason, Vidhi wishes to buy a mechanical robot programmed to throw the ball in different ways so that she can practice different variations in the lockdown and even later.

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