Squash star Dipika aims high
India’s squash queen Dipika Pallikal made a great start to the year by winning the Meadowood Pharmacy Open in Canada recently — her sixth WSA title. The 21-year-old Chennai born player now wants to keep winning in a bid to inch closer to her main goal of achieving the world no. 1 ranking.
“It is a great start to the year for me. I am happy to win in Canada but I have got a lot of tournaments lined up for the rest of the year. Hopefully I’ll continue to play like I did in Canada and win a few more,” said Dipika in an interview with this paper on Tuesday.
“Winning any tournament gives confidence. It will help my ranking too and hopefully I will win a lot more tournaments. My main aim is to be World No 1 may be in two years time. But my biggest fear is the injury so I am not putting any particular time frame.
“Thankfully I have been injury free so far,” added country’s top player who is now based in Melbourne and is currently in Mumbai on a private visit.
“I will play the Malaysian Open towards the end of this month. I will be going back to Australia from here and train for a couple of weeks to prepare for the tournament,” Deepika, who trains under former World No. 1 and five-time World Cup winner Sarah FitzGerald of Australia, said.
“Sarah has been on the circuit for years, done everything. Just having her with me sharing her experience is great. I am taking things slowly with her and working on a lot of areas especially on the technicalities. I always try to work with her some way or the other. My game is different from a lot of people on the circuit,” she said.
Dipika will be India’s biggest hope for a medal if squash finally makes it to the 2020 Olympics and the Chennai lass can’t wait to see the sport in the megaevent.
“Squash is the only racquet sport missing out in the Olympics so far. We deserve to be there.
“We’d love to get into the Olympics. It will help the sport grow.”