UTT announces franchises for inaugural season

The Ultimate Table Tennis (UTT), India's newest sports franchise league, promises to be a sporting breakthrough with a number of top franchises confirming their participation.

Unlike other major sporting leagues being run in the country currently like IPL and ISL, UTT will have club based franchises rather than city based franchises.

The five franchises currently on board for the inaugural season are: Dabang Smashers T.T.C owned by Radha Kapoor Khanna of Dolt Sports; RP-SG Mavericks by Sanjiv Goenka of RP-SG Group; Maharashtra United by Kapil and Mr. Dheeraj Wadhawan of Rajesh Wadhawan Group; ASK T.T.C owned by Sameer Koticha of ASK Group and Oilmax Stag Yoddhas by Kapil Garg and Vivek Kohli. The sixth franchise will be announced soon.

The coach draft scheduled for Monday includes a vast pool of highly experienced Indian and international coaches.

Indian coaches: Arup Basak, A. Muralidhara Rao, N Ravichandran, Sachin Shetty, Sandeep Gupta and Soumyadeep Roy.

Foreign coaches: Elena Timina (Netherlands), Ferenc Karsai (Hungary), Francisco Santos (Portugal), Ilija Lupulesku (USA), Peter Engel (Germany) and Vesna Ojstersek (Slovenia)

The inaugural season will be played from July 13 to July 30 in three different cities - Chennai, Delhi and Mumbai. The first two legs will be held in Chennai and Delhi before UTT shifts base to Mumbai for the finale.

Each franchise will comprise of a combination of overseas and Indian players- four men and four women, along with one Indian and one international coach each.