31 teams confirm participation for cadet & sub-jr nationals

Thirty one states, including Petroleum Sports Promotion Board, have confirmed their entries and a total of 510 players from all over the country will be seen in action during the next six days.

The events, originally allotted to Tamil Nadu, had to be shifted here due to the unavailability of stadium at Chennai. Now it will be jointly conducted by the Gujarat Table Tennis Association and the Kutch District Table Tennis Association.

As per the draw conducted at the TTFI (Table Tennis Federation of India) office in New Delhi, teams have been given the place based on their performances last year at Kochi and divided into eight groups of four and three teams.

It will be interesting to see how the Bengal boys' teams -- west and north -- perform this year, and whether the Andhra and Tamil Nadu girls, who did exceedingly well in the last year, can match their previous performance.

The PSPB teams will be looking to do something extraordinary and continue to domination the senior sections.

The team championship finals are slated for January 19 with VM Pargi, IG Border Range Bhuj, as the chief guest.

As for the individual finals, it will be held on January 21, where the chief guest will be TTFI secretary-general DR Choudhary.

Matches will be conducted on 14 Donic tables with Nittakku white balls and on the synthetic flooring.

There will be 50 umpires from all over the country. N Ganeshan from Kerala will be the competition manager, while Anil Dubey from Rajasthan will be the chief referee.

The championships will be inaugurated by AK Bhardwaj, Jt Commissioner of Income Tax, Gandhidham Range tomorrow at 11 am. The major co-sponsors of the championships are GAIL and Cargo Motors Pvt Ltd.