At the age of 14, Divyanshi Bhowmick has created a milestone in Indian table tennis history. In 36 years, she became the first Indian to win a continental singles crown at the 2025 Asian Youth Championship being held in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. India’s Subramanian Bhuvaneswari was the last winner of that age group in the 1989 edition held in New Delhi.
Participating in the U-15 girls’ singles category, the second-seeded Indian player defeated three top-seeded Chinese players to take the gold medal. In the semis she got a comfortable win against Liu Ziling. Her brilliance continued in the finals when she won against the People’s Republic of China’s Zhu Qihi by 4-2 (in sets 13-11, 11-8, 8-11, 12-10, 9-11, 11-8).
For Divyanshi, the year 2025 is a season for milestones. Starting with her domestic career, she was awarded Best Women’s Player overall in the Table Tennis Super League (TTSL) Maharashtra in April and was the highest-paid player of the season after getting auctioned for Rs 82,000.
In the UTT National Ranking Tournament in Vadodara, she won a U-17 bronze and a U-19 silver title. In the same tournament that followed in Delhi, she added a silver in the U-17 division.
Her prominence followed in the international events when she claimed three medals in a single event in Amman, Jordan, including gold in U-15 Mixed Doubles and U-17 Girls’ Singles each and a silver in U-19 Girls’ Singles.
She also won three medals at the World Table Tennis (WTT) Youth Contender in Vadodara, with two gold medals in the U-15 and U-17 Girls’ Singles categories and a silver in the U-15 Girls’ Doubles category.
World No. 1 in ITTF Under-19 Girls’ Doubles rankings
Alongside her milestone in singles, she has recently made her career first as World No. 1 in the latest ITTF Under-19 Girls’ Doubles rankings alongside her partner Syndrela Das. All thanks to their consistent top performances across domestic and international events, the Indian pair achieved this milestone.
In the World Table Tennis (WTT) Youth Contenders held in Vadodara, the Indian duo were ahead with 3,910 points against the Chinese Taipei pair of Wu Jia-En and Wu Ying-Syuan (3,195 points) and France’s Leana Hochart and Nina Guo Zheng (3,170 points).
The duo has previously won gold medals at the WTT Youth Contender in Goa and the WTT Youth Star Contender in Tunis, along with semi-final spots in the Berlin and Lima editions.
