Venugopal Chandrasekhar (18 June 1957 – 12 May 2021[1]) was an Indian national table tennis champion and Arjuna Award winner.
His style was flamboyant and at a time when sports coverage on TV was very limited, tickets for his matches sold in the black market in towns that traditionally patronised table tennis like Indore and Pune.
The wrong dosage of anesthesia played its part and he suffered brain damage and lost his vision and control over his limbs.
The medical community's omertà was broken by a few brave doctors, especially an Orthopedist from Maharashtra who helped to demolish the hospital's case.
During the trial it came to light that the orthopedic surgeon of the hospital had received training in arthroscopy only in workshops in UK and not in a medical school as part of the curriculum.
Chandrasekhar was one of the sports professionals in India to ask for appearance money and also actively sought to improve players' working conditions.
He wrote a column on table tennis, "TopSpin", for The Telegraph and also covered tournaments for newspapers after his operation.
From a person equipped with razor sharp reflexes needed to play a game in which the ball typically travels at 100 km/h or more, Chandrasekhar became a person who did not have normal peripheral vision and couldn't see beyond a few feet; he suffered from a condition called nystagmus - his eyeballs could not focus.
Chandrashekhar wrote, with the help of Seetha Srikanth, an autobiography, My fightback from Death's door, published by Eastwest books, Chennai, in 2006.