The Batra Mantra!

Manika Batra reflects on her golden journey in Gold Coast.

If it were a dream, I would have liked it to go on. I wouldn’t have liked to be woken up.

The Commonwealth Games in Gold Coast gave me something that I believed was possible. But there is always a differ­ence in believing in your potential and realising it on the big stage. In these Games, a dream turned into reality, poten­tial turned into timely performance and India, as a team, proved what self­belief was capable of changing. The results, I would like to believe, have done their bit to change a mindset for the better.

Personally, for me, four medals from four events is nothing short of a fairytale. To play my part in the historic team cham­pionship triumph and to follow it up in the singles is still to sink in.

To add medals from the two doubles is like finding the missing pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.

Let me begin from the point when we defeated England 3­0 in the team semi­ finals. I told my team­mates, let us not think too much about the final now. We’ll take rest.

Individually, we all had our minds thinking about the matches in the final.We stayed upbeat and believed that Singapore was beatable. I kept repeating that we could make history since no Indian wo­ men’s team had ever won the Common­ wealth Games gold.

The biggest reason behind this optim­ ism was the fact that all three of us — Mouma Di (Das), Madhurika (Patkar) and I — were in good shape and playing very well. TheMouma­Madhurika doubles com­bination was pulling off match after match after the defeat against Wales. That’s why I said in the meeting that it was important to win the doubles. I assured the team of giv­ing my best in my two singles. Just before the final, our coach Max (Massimo Cost­antini) also boosted our confidence.