Sharath Kamal

Achanta Sharath Kamal (Telugu : అచంత సరత్‌ కమల్‌) (born 12 July, 1982) is a professional table tennis player from Tamilnadu, India, hails from a Telugu speaking family. He won the men's singles gold in the 16th Commonwealth table tennis championship held at Kuala Lumpur in 2004. He also captained the Indian men's team that won the team title at the same championship by defeating favourites and nine-time champions England. He is a recipient of the Arjuna award for the year 2004. He stays in Chennai and is employed with the Indian Oil Corporation as an officer.

He also won the gold medal at the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne, beating crowd favourite Australian William Henzell in the final, apart from helping the Indian team clinch gold in the table tennis team event against Singapore. His world ranking is 72.

He represented India in the 2004 Olympics in Athens and has been the India No. 1 for four years now. He also has represented the country in the 2006 Asian Games at Qatar.

In the year 2007 he was the First Indian to win the Pyongyong Invitational Tournament held at Pyongyong,North korea. This was the 21st edition of the tournament which was held in August 2007.His best performance on the world circuit came up in the Japan Pro Tour helds in June 2007 where he beat World No.19, Lee Jung Woo ( South Korea). After this victory he reached his career best ranking of World No.73 and currently by the end of Dec 2007 his ranking is 79.

Incidentally, Sharath is the only Indian Men's Table Tennis player to be selected for the Beijing Olympics.

He passed out from PSBB (Nungambakkam) in 2000 and went on to complete his graduation from Loyola College, Chennai.