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Originally Posted by Christy
If you ever need any help with them just ask.
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I want Chittoor to have 5.5 strength and speed. Oh, not what you meant?
Probably a good pick with De Jong, we'll see what happens there.
Nasir Chittoor and the Quest for 8.9
Juniors Overview
By 8.9 of course I refer to my 'overall rating'. All of my players have hit around 8.75, and Dudwadkar had the highest - although a bit brief - peak AFAIK at 8.83. So if I can get to 8.90 or better, that would definitely make Chittoor my best ever, and I think it's achievable. I also wanted to do a bit of a walkthrough through his career and show how it compares to other players of mine around the way - and what I've changed in my approach over time.
Raw Training Comparison
The raw skill/service/doubles numbers from my previous players. I didn't start tracking Girsh till age 21, and Mehul till age 24, so this isn't complete. But at age 18, here's how the others fared:
** Moojee 72/46/1
** Dudwadkar 67/54/0
** Chiba 69/48/2
** Kasaravalli 64/51/0
** Chittoor 68/54/0
** Guha 51/40/71
We can see how much including the doubles is affecting Guha, and also that I used to do skill a lot more early on. Now I keep it more even between skill/service at first, and gradually 'tilt' the balance to the desired ratio by the time they hit 4.0 service, as I've previously discussed. Among the others, Chiba and Kasaravalli were definitely the ones lagging behind at this age. Chittoor is just a hair ahead of the pace set by Mooljee and Dudwadkar here.
Juniors Results
This is the7th 'generation' of Sri Lanka talents I've raised and trained. They are listed in chronological order here. As you might imagine, what was once a matter of literally being alive and able to draw breath to get into the national Legends roll now takes a bit more doing. Kasaravalli just debuted at #10 - you've got to be well inside the Top 100 now to make it, so my latest proteges have some work to do before that happens.
** Anil Mehul - 9 titles, 15y 14w to 18y 32w, peaked at #15
** Girish Girsh - 10, 15y 19w to 18y 16w, #6
** Prakash Mooljee - 17, 14y 46w to 17y 43w, #11
** Ritwik Dudwadkar - 8 , 15y 6w to 18y 9w, #8
** Sushant Chiba - 19, 15y 1w to 17y 44w, #3
** Amrik Kasaravalli - 10, 15y 33 w to 18y 5w, #6
** Nasir Chittoor - 11, 15y 29w to 16y 38w, #13
** Satyajit Guha - 4, 15y 51w to 17y 28w, #68
I've made this point before, but the biggest thing to get from all this is that juniors results don't tell you much of anything about how good as a pro a prospect will be. Chiba was my finest junior, and my first player never to make it to #1 as a senior thanks to the Kaspars and Irish. Aside from Guha, Mehul was among the worst and is recognized as the nation's finest ever player, justifiably. He was an 'old' junior on the opposite end as Chittoor, but also had a rock-bottom aging factor of 95%. And then there's Mooljee, who found success early but his later development years were not so kind. find these measures a lot more useful though as we go through the higher levels of competition. Along with the raw training comparisons, they provide a useful yardstick or framework to measure whether a player is progressing more quickly or slowly than my previous attempts. While I'm only going to include my own players here, those of you who have others of similar age like Fitzpatrick or Intodia may wish to see how your results compare as well.
As a general rule, it's been mentioned you want a good doubles partner in this stage. First year(age 14-15) is about establishing the player as JG5 and you'll lose a lot the first few months. Second year at JG4, third year at JG3, final year at JGS/JGA/JG1s primarily, the big events. And of course any JTC apperances you can make will help a lot. I continue to favor, at all levels, the idea of playing the biggest event you can confidently be a Top-4 seed at. Sometimes you can find a favorable spot in the schedule with a busy week to 'play up' a level above what you'd normally be able to do.