Japanese coach came to the national table tennis team in the 1990s. This is the first time a Dhaka club has created a surprise by bringing a high profile coach from Japan. Future Sporting brought in Yutaka Nakano, the former coach of Japan’s national women’s team, to train their players.
The head coach of the club, former national champion Javed Ahmed told the Bangla Tribune, ‘We have brought Japanese coach Yutaka Nakano. He is a great coach. Hope the players can improve a lot under this coach. He will work as our advisory coach.
Yutaka, 25, is a coach as well as a player. He is in the top sixteen in the ranking in his country. He has experience coaching in junior championships in the United States apart from Japan. He has been brought to the Dhaka club for a month. There is also talk of keeping it for another two months.
Only registered players in the club will have the opportunity to learn from Japanese coaches. In the presence of Japanese coaches, Future Sporting Club will organize a day-long table tennis tournament at Kalabagan Lab Aid Iconic Building on March 2.
Five-time national champion Manas Chowdhury praised the initiative of the country’s domestic club, ‘As far as I know, this is the first time a foreign coach has come to a club. Too high profile coach. Japan is already ranked fourth in the world. Bringing big coaches from there is a big deal. They love table tennis very much. That is why such a coach has been brought.’
Before the 2016 SA Games, the Bangladeshi players had the last opportunity to practice with North Korean TT coach Kim Sung Han and training assistant Kim Sugan. After that, there was no foreign coach.
Former national champion Manas thinks that such an initiative could have been taken from the federation, ‘Bringing such a coach at the government level is not a difficult task. Where a domestic club can easily bring in such a coach, it is incomprehensible why the federation cannot. Those who are currently in this federation do not really want that.’
