Stationed at the SAI centre on the outskirts of Bengaluru, Massimo Costantini is busy watching a bunch of videos of India’s Olympics-bound paddlers, “about their recent performances, good and bad," he says. Back for his third stint as national coach after leaving Indian table tennis at its zenith in 2018, the 66-year-old Italian has in front of him “multiple objectives — very interesting, challenging, motivating".

The most immediate is the Paris Games in less than two months’ time. Later this week, the newly appointed coach will take charge of a 10-day camp in Bengaluru — the first of two planned camps before Paris — where he will reconnect with players he has known from six years ago and believes are “more mature” now.

It is why he hopes the dearth of time in preparing India’s squad for the Games that will compete in team events for the first time will not be that big a factor.

“Time is short, of course," Costantini said. “But players have been active during the last 7-8 months, and I can count on their individual professionalism. I would like to add some tactical inputs, experience and adjustments to their game.”

An adjustment the 1988 Olympian has already made is adding a third tournament to their platter between this camp and the one in July in Germany where they will spar with paddlers from other countries.

“Two (tournaments) were too less,” he said. “We need to prepare some doubles. I need to assess them, see where they lack, where they show their best strength and where we can bridge the gap. We have a good month before the final touch in Germany. I'm confident they will reach Paris in their best shape.”

With both teams making the Olympics cut for the first time — apart from Sharath Kamal, Harmeet Desai, Manika Batra and Sreeja Akula competing in singles events — Costantini’s presence assumes greater significance. The doubles combinations, the form players for singles and the order will be largely down to his judgement.

"We have to be prepared for different combinations in doubles, who's playing better in singles against a particular player. These decisions will be taken the night before the match," he said. “It will also depend a lot on the seeding. If we don't do well in these upcoming tournaments, it means we will be behind in that. And then we can expect to get China, Japan or Korea first up. If we do well, we can maybe have an easier task.”

Indian paddlers have delivered a few stunning results against players of these top Asian nations of late. Think Ayhika Mukherjee and Sutirtha Mukherjee’s Asian Games doubles bronze going past the Chinese, Ayhika and Sreeja beating the top two Chinese in the team Worlds, and Sharath and Manika’s deep runs at the Singapore and Saudi Smash, respectively. While Costantini termed these performances “sensational”, he would like them to come with greater frequency.

“Indian table tennis now has more respect from other countries. They are afraid of India," he said. “But we need to have more consistent results like those. I don't want that they are only sporadic shocks. And they say, 'Ah, India is strong, but maybe once in a while they have some outstanding performance and otherwise they are average'. I want to change this perception. I want to establish more confidence in our players that once you reach a certain level, from there you have to go up. Even stagnating is not a good result.”

And so, the Italian wants to take Indian table tennis even higher in the larger picture beyond this year’s Olympics. “I want India to be among the top four countries — be there after China, Japan, Germany and the others. For that, we need to change internally.”

For now, though, it’s all about Paris, and doing better there than in Tokyo three years ago.

“What they did three years back is something we have to improve. Now, we have already improved on that by playing the team (events). If we win one match and make it to the quarter-final, it's already a big success. We have to take it step by step,” he said.

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