Mantu Ghosh is an Indian former table tennis player from West Bengal. Two times national champion, Ghosh is now the national table tennis coach of the women's team and sports administrator, having worked in different capacities at the state and the national level. She was featured in the Limca Book of Records for becoming the youngest national champion of table tennis in 1990 at the age of 16. Her achievements in the sport were recognised by the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports, Government of India, in 2002 when the Ministry awarded her the Arjuna Award.
Career
Ghosh is regarded as the first prominent table tennis player from Siliguri, which is now considered as the "nursery" of table tennis players in India having produced many national champions and Olympians. She was awarded the Arjuna Award in 2002 by the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports, Government of India, as a recognition of her achievements in table tennis. She received the Banga Bhushan, a civil honour of West Bengal state, from the Governor of West Bengal M. K. Narayanan on 20 May 2013.
National career
Ghosh started her training of table tennis at Deshbandhu Sporting Union, Siliguri, and won the 1988 Sub-Junior National Championship while being a trainee at the club. She won the Junior National Table Tennis Championship in 1990 and in the same year she participated in the 52nd Senior National Table Tennis Championship held at Jaipur, Rajasthan. She won the title and created a new record of becoming the youngest national champion of table tennis at the age of 16, this achievement was featured in the Limca Book of Records. Her victory at the national championship was attributed to motivate many more players in Siliguri to pursue table tennis. She won the singles title at the 55th Senior National Table Tennis Championship in 1993.
International career
Ghosh competed in all the events—singles, doubles, mixed doubles and team—of table tennis at the 2002 Commonwealth Games held in Manchester, England. She failed to move pass the first round of singles; reached the quarterfinals of doubles – pairing with Indu Nagapattinam R. – and eventually ranked fifth; reached the third round of mixed doubles, pairing with Subramaniam Raman; and the Indian team – comprising Mouma Das, Indu Nagapattinam R., Nandita Saha and Poulomi Ghatak besides Ghosh – finished at sixth position in the final tally. She qualified for the main draw of the 2003 World Table Tennis Championships held in Paris, France; participating in the singles and the doubles events. Malaysian paddler Yao Lin Jing defeated Ghosh in the first round of singles by 12–10, 11–6, 11–3, 11–5 and the pair of Mauma Das and Ghosh lost against the Singaporean pair of Xueling Zhang and Paey Fern Tan by 11–8, 7–11, 5–11, 2–11, 11–8, 7–11 in doubles.
Post-retirement
After her retirement, Ghosh started coaching players and became a part of different organisations related to table tennis at the state and the national level. She is the Chief Coach at Young Men's Association's table tennis coaching centre in Siliguri. She was the national coach for women's team, along with Kamlesh Mehta as the coach of man's team, and prepared the team for the 2010 Commonwealth Games. She trained both Soumyajit Ghosh and Ankita Das who qualified for the 2012 Summer Olympics in London in their respective categories. She was appointed as the Vice-Chairperson of the North Bengal Board for Development of Sports and Games in 2016 by the Chief Minister of West BengalMamata Banarjee. The Board, with Bhaichung Bhutia as its Chairman, is based at Kanchenjunga Stadium and is responsible for developing and promoting sports in the seven districts of North Bengal. She was nominated for the post of joint-secretary of the Table Tennis Federation of India in 2017. When the Bengal StateTable Tennis Association was established after the merger of two different factions of table tennis—North Bengal Table Tennis Association and West Bengal Table Tennis Association —in West Bengal, Ghosh, who was the president of NBTTA earlier, became the joint secretary of the new association along with her counterpart from the WBTTAA, Sharmi Sengupta. The merger was necessitated due to the sports code of India which allows only one representative sport association from each state for the respective sport.
