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Who is Sharath Kamal?

Achanta Sharath Kamal, born on 12 July 1982 in Chennai, is India's most decorated table tennis player. Across five Commonwealth Games, from Melbourne 2006 to Birmingham 2022, he won 13 medals, including seven golds. He played at five Olympic Games, carried India's flag at the Paris 2024 opening ceremony, and won a record ten national titles before retiring in March 2025.

Sharath grew up in a family where table tennis was a way of life. His father Srinivasa Rao and his uncle Muralidhar Rao were both state level players and national level coaches, and they put a bat in his hand when he was four years old. He practised before and after school every day, learned to handle defeat as well as victory, and by his mid teens had chosen the sport over a career in engineering. He studied at PSBB Nungambakkam school and Loyola College in Chennai, and he has worked for the Indian Oil Corporation as an officer through much of his playing career.

ਮੁੱਢਲਾ ਜੀਵਨ

Sharath was born into a Telugu speaking family in Madras, now Chennai, on 12 July 1982. His father and uncle had both played the game at state level and coached at national level, so the dinner table talk was often about technique, footwork and temperament. As a boy he won the Tamil Nadu state championships at under 10, under 12, under 14 and under 17 levels, and he was known early on for an aggressive game and a willingness to try new things, even when it cost him matches.

The turning point came just before the 2002 Commonwealth Games, when he was picked for a national training camp with the senior probables. He did not make the final squad, but training beside India's best gave him belief and a clear picture of the standard he had to reach. He lost the senior national final in 2002, then won his first national title in 2003, the first of a record ten.

Rise to the top

Sharath's first international singles gold came at the 2004 Commonwealth Table Tennis Championships in Kuala Lumpur, and the same year he made his Olympic debut at Athens. Two years later, at the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne, he beat Australia's William Henzell 4-3 in a 40 minute singles final to become the first Indian to win a table tennis gold at the Games, then helped India beat Singapore 3-2 for the team gold, the country's first ever in the event.

The titles kept coming. He won the national championship five times in a row from 2006 to 2010. In 2010 he won the Egypt Open, becoming the first Indian to win a singles title on the ITTF Pro Tour. At the Delhi Commonwealth Games that October he won doubles gold with Subhajit Saha, plus bronze in the singles and the team event. His ninth national title in 2019 took him past Kamlesh Mehta's long standing record of eight, and his tenth came in 2022, when he came back from 3-1 down to beat Sathiyan Gnanasekaran 4-3 in the final.

On the world circuit his best years came late. He reached a career high world ranking of No. 30 in 2019, and in 2020 he won the Oman Open, his first international title in ten years, beating top seed Marcos Freitas of Portugal in a final that lasted an hour. He also spent much of his career playing club table tennis in Europe, most notably for Borussia Düsseldorf in the German Bundesliga, where he won German titles with the team.

Commonwealth Games and Asian Games

No Indian table tennis player has matched Sharath's Commonwealth Games record: 13 medals across five editions, seven gold, three silver and three bronze. After the two golds in Melbourne in 2006 came doubles gold in Delhi in 2010, doubles silver in Glasgow in 2014, and four medals at Gold Coast in 2018: team gold, doubles silver, singles bronze and mixed doubles bronze.

His finest Games came last, at Birmingham 2022, a few weeks after he turned 40. He won four medals there: team gold, mixed doubles gold with Sreeja Akula, doubles silver with Sathiyan Gnanasekaran, and singles gold, beating England's Liam Pitchford in the final.

At the Asian Games, where China, Japan and South Korea make medals far harder to win, he took two bronzes at Jakarta in 2018: one with the men's team, after India stunned former world champions Japan, and one in the mixed doubles with Manika Batra. It was the first Asian Games medal for the Indian men's team in 60 years.

Olympics and the world stage

Sharath played at five Olympic Games: Athens 2004, Beijing 2008, Rio 2016, Tokyo 2020 and Paris 2024. He missed London 2012 after failing to qualify, which makes the longevity of his Olympic career all the more striking. His most memorable Olympic match came at Tokyo 2020, where he reached the third round of the singles and took a set off defending champion Ma Long before losing 4-1.

At Paris 2024 he and badminton star PV Sindhu carried India's flag at the opening ceremony, the first time a table tennis player had received that honour. His singles campaign ended in the first round, with a loss to Slovenia's Deni Kozul, but the flag bearer role was a fitting recognition of two decades at the top. He also helped India qualify a men's team for Paris 2024, a first for the country. Across his career he played 174 competitive events and took part in 19 ITTF World Championships and World Team Championships.

Retirement and life after playing

Sharath announced his retirement on 5 March 2025, choosing to end his career at home. His final event was the WTT Star Contender in Chennai later that month, the city where he had played his first international tournament, the Asian junior championships, in 1999. He won two qualifying matches, then lost 0-3 to his doubles partner Snehit Suravajjula in the round of 16 on 29 March, and closed the evening with an exhibition match against Egypt's Omar Assar and an emotional address to the Chennai crowd.

He has said he wants to keep serving the sport off the table, and he moved quickly into administration. He is vice chairperson of the Indian Olympic Association's Athletes' Commission and co chair of the ITTF Athletes' Commission, and he has started a high performance centre in Chennai with the Tamil Nadu government as a partner, a project he has long described as a dream. He also mentors young Indian players, including Manav Thakkar, and works with the Chennai Lions franchise in the Ultimate Table Tennis league.

Honours and legacy

India has honoured Sharath with its three biggest sporting awards: the Arjuna Award in 2004, the Padma Shri in 2019 and the Major Dhyan Chand Khel Ratna in 2022. His ten national titles are a record, and his 13 Commonwealth Games medals are the most won by any Indian table tennis player.

His legacy goes beyond the medal count. He was the first Indian to win an ITTF Pro Tour title, the first to train overseas and play club table tennis in Europe, and the player who showed a generation of Indians that the sport could be a career. The players who followed him, from Sathiyan Gnanasekaran to Manika Batra, built on the path he opened, and the structures he is now building in Chennai are meant to carry the next generation further still.