Sharath Kamal gets top seed at TT Nationals after four years

India's top player Sharath Kamal, for the first time in four years, has been seeded number one in the men's singles at the ongoing 11Even Sports Senior Table Tennis Nationals here.
This follows a resolution moved by the technical committee which wanted the players figuring in the top 100 bracket of the world ranking getting some security and motivation, besides adding the glamour quotient to zonal and national championships.
The committee had also suggested according equal weight to national ranking points and it would be concurrent with the world ranking.
The AGM approved the technical committee motion and, accordingly, Sharath was given the place of pride, taking into consideration his current world ranking of 62 and his title-winning effort in the South Zone Championships at Visakhapatnam. The three-time Olympian was ranked 59 in January.

Sharath ceded his top place for the first time in many years and was seeded five at the Raipur nationals in 2013. Since then the top slot has been shared by five paddlers-reigning national champion Anthony Amalraj, former champions Soumyajit Ghosh and Sanil Shetty, G. Sathiyan and Harmeet Desai, in both national and zonal championships.
In fact, Sharath had to play the qualifiers at Vizag since more credence was given to national ranking points. But since Sharath had not participated in any of the national ranking championships, he had no points and was forced to play the group matches.

The technical committee has since met and corrected the anomaly, thus paving the way for restoring his pride. Incidentally, Sharath who was shunned by PSPB for the team event and will turn out for them in singles.

Sathiyan, who is leading the points table, is at No. 2, followed by Amalraj (3), Sanil Shetty (4), Harmeet Desai (5), Soumyajit Ghosh (6), Jubin Kumar (7) and Manav Thakkar (8).
The women seeding list has six out of eight players from PSPB with Madhurika Patkar getting the top position. West Bengal's Suthirtha Mukherjee, who was crowned as the Institutional champion and one zonal title, is seeded two while Pooja Sahasrabuddhe, representing Maharashtra, is seeded eight.
Mouma Das, Mousumi Paul, Manika Batra, Reeth Rishya and Ankita Das are following Suthirtha and ahead of Pooja.