MAKING OF A CHAMPION

Squash player Joshna Chinappa's Padma Shri is the icing on the cake of a storied career

- Shail Desai

IN January, Joshna Chinappa was travelling to Coorg to meet her father, Anjan, when she received a call from an unknown number. By the end of the conversation, the squash exponent was quite over the moon.

"An official informed me that I was being awarded the Padma Shri. I was pleasantly surprised as I wasn't expecting it," Chinappa, 37, says. 

This was acknowledgment of a decorated career that has flourished for over two decades. Chinappa first turned out for India at the age of 12 in 1998, competing at the Asian Junior Championships in Malaysia. It gave her a good feel of what it was like to be a team player. A couple of years later, she won the Senior Nationals at just 14 years-a tournament she's gone on to win a record 19 times, the last title coming back in 2022. "From the time I was 13, I've had some good matches against Indians. This was what pushed me to train harder and be a better player," she says.