Hot Ball

At a time when India’s presence in sports is growing rapidly beyond cricket, Ritwik Bhattacharya, erstwhile national champion-gone-coach, doesn’t want squash to get left behind.

- Aatish Nath

"It’s a pursuit,” says Ritwik Bhattacharya, a bit more animatedly than he has been all day. “You’re constantly pushing – sleeping, eating, drinking the sport. There are no shortcuts; you have to be fully immersed.”

We’re at START (Squash Temple And Real Training): Bhattacharya’s year-old academy in the lush village of Mokashi, nestled in the Western Ghats about an hour outside Mumbai. The five-time national champion is talking about how he used to train relentlessly to achieve his goals as his charges, kitted out in olive green T-shirts, line up to make their way onto the court for their Saturday training. “These kids are fantastic,” says Bhattacharya, “they really are doing so much, on so many levels.”

In what is perhaps the country’s only independently funded squash training centre, Bhattacharya has built START from the ground up. His goal is singular: to train the next generation of champions. “Basically, I didn’t have this when I was 12,” he says, now 39. “I mean, I had places to play and stuff like that, but I never had a place where everything was done for you. So my thought is that every kid who comes here should be treated like a champion.”

While sports in general are having a moment in India, with multiple national leagues for football, kabaddi, cricket, hockey and even badminton, squash still retains an elite status: a pursuit for members of the country’s clubs, or for those in the armed forces – which, incidentally, is where Bhattacharya picked up the game (his father was in the Air Force). There are few courts to play on, for the most part they’re hard to access and, unlike football or cricket, squash requires specialised equipment.