A player’s understanding, turned into a coach’s method.

Subham Kundu discovered table tennis at six years old, visiting a neighbourhood club in Kolkata with his father. What caught him was the speed of it — and the sound. Within three years he was competing at state and national championships, and he would go on to spend more than fifteen years on the Indian national circuit.

He came up through Kalidhan Institution in South Kolkata, and the school records tell the story of a player improving every season: runner-up in the sub-junior category at the West Bengal Schools championships in 2000 and 2001, then the under-14 individual title and the team title in 2002, then runner-up at under-17 in 2003 and 2004.

The national breakthrough came at the School Games Federation of India championships. At the 49th National School Games in Bhopal in February 2004 he won the under-17 individual title and the under-17 team title for West Bengal, and the following January he took a second team gold at the 50th National School Games in Kanpur.

Ranked in the top ten in India

Between 2002 and 2009 he stood on the podium at four national and inter-state championships — third with Bengal’s sub-junior team at Sirsa in 2002, third with West Bengal at the 67th Junior Nationals in Shillong in 2005, third with the Railway Sports Promotion Board at the 70th Junior & Youth Nationals in Surat in 2008, and third again with West Bengal at the 71st in Raipur in 2009.

In March 2007 the Table Tennis Federation of India put it in writing: “Master Subham Kundu has been ranked No. 8 for the year 2006 in the youth boys category. He is a very promising player.”

Railways, and a decade of service sport

From 2008 he represented Eastern Railway. He won the team championship at the 56th All India Railway Championship in Kolkata in 2008, and finished runner-up at the 58th in Lucknow in 2010 and second at the 59th in 2011. He played the 71st Senior National & Inter-State Championships in Guwahati in 2010 for the Railways, and in 2017 won the men’s team title at the All India Civil Services Championship in Bhiwani, Haryana.

Alongside that he won the East Zone team championship for the Indian Audit & Accounts Department in Sikkim in 2012 — taking runner-up in the singles at the same tournament — and the inter-college title for Herambo Chandra College at Haldia Institute of Technology in 2011.

California

In 2019 the India Community Center invited him to Milpitas, California, to coach. He has been there since, and he never stopped competing: U-3800 doubles champion at the 2021 US Open in Las Vegas, winner of the V-2200 event at the USATT four-star ICC JOOLA Fall Open the same year, and a finalist, semifinalist and quarterfinalist across three events at the 2022 JOOLA Global Championships in Orlando.

In July 2024 the USATT Coaching Committee certified him as a National Coach. His own journey as a player gave him a deep understanding of the technical, physical, tactical and mental demands of succeeding at the highest level of the sport — and it is that understanding, rather than any single method, that he brings to the athletes he develops.