It is difficult to miss the spunk in Joshna Chinappa, India’s top-ranked squash player. The 30-year old from Chennai won the Asian Championship last weekend—the biggest title win in her career spanning 14 years.
This is enough reason to be over the moon, but celebrations at her home are kept simple. She turned pro at the age of 16, became the first Indian player to win the Junior British Open title at the age of 18. It has been a long and tough journey to compete at the highest level. She reasserted her class by beating compatriot Dipika Pallikal Karthik in front of a cheering home crowd.
Having been in the game for more than a decade, the last few years saw the rise of Pallikal, but the competition between the two girls has always been healthy. The duo even won the Commonwealth Games gold at Glasgow in the doubles event—a historic first for India—but Chinappa persisted with her aim to become a top 10-ranked player in the world, who could win against the world bests.
Currently, ranked world No 14, she achieved her career best ranking of No 10 in July 2016. In fact, she has been extremely well in the last one year, beating top ten players, including former world No 1 Rachael Grinham at the British Open in March this year.
In April this year, she became the first Indian to reach the quarter finals of the PSA World Championships when she scripted her career-first win over England's world No 9 Alison Waters in Egypt. In November 2015, she beat world No 1 Raneem el Welily in Dubai.
Chinappa was looking to get consistent results and credits the new national coach Ashraf El Karagi, from Egypt, who took charge in March. With the season having ended, Chinappa is enjoying a short break back home before starting season training ahead of the world championships, the Commonwealth Games (CWG) and Asian Games next year as well as the PSA pro tour. Speaking to THE WEEK from her home in Chennai, Chinappa looks back at her ground-breaking season. Excerpts:
How do you see your good run over the last two years?
I was pretty good game wise, coming into top-10 rankings. There were a couple of good wins, I beat the world No 1. I just needed to be a lot more consistent—trying to beat them regularly, go higher up in world series events. I worked quite a bit with our Egyptian coach, it's been seven to eight months now with him and my quality of the game has gone up.
What will be your focus for the new season?
More bigger wins, more consistently. Next six months will be very crucial for me.
How specifically has the new coach helped? Which are the areas you've improved?
I am now based in Chennai full-time, it helps to be here. He has worked with a lot of top players. He gets on court with me three to four times a week. We are constantly talking about my game, that helps a lot, to have someone there constantly giving inputs, discussing, supporting, guiding me through my training everyday. He’s really keen and focused on development of the players and the game here.
Which are the areas that you identified over the last one year that helped you break through?
I think I trained pretty hard, did a lot of work. There was something missing, that wasn’t there, which I wanted to see. In the last few tournaments, I was beating top players. I understood what I needed to do to up my game as also my ranking... It was an eye opener.
What next, after having won a major title?
I don’t want to go much into my goals, that creates unnecessary pressure. There's another world championship at the end of the year and the pro tour, (I) look to get back to the grind. There is the CWG and Asian Games next year, I need to prepare for that.
How did you celebrate the win?
I came back home, it has been pretty relaxing. Nothing much, I danced with my dog! Taking a few days off before I start training for the new season.
