Pranav Venkatesh and his coach GM Shyam Sundar M (@GM_Pranav_V on X)
NEW DELHI: The soft thud of a yellow smiley-face sponge ball striking the floor again and again barely disturbed the silence of a five-star hotel room, where 18-year-old Pranav Venkatesh and his coach, GM Shyam Sundar M, were putting up during the Chennai Masters in November last year.
Standing tall with a table tennis racquet — now a makeshift cricket bat — Pranav had already transformed his room into the quietest battleground ever. And if there was no sponge ball or table tennis racquet? No problem! The student-teacher duo would improvise, turning a bottle cap into a ball and the bottle into a bat, maximising the use of their limited resources.
It is a familiar…
