Leading paddlers of the country, sans Achanta Sharath Kamal, will be seen in action in the 43rd Inter-Institutional Table Tennis Championships at the District Youth Service Indoor Hall here, starting tomorrow.
With the Petroleum Sports Promotion Board (PSPB) getting the pride of place in all the four categories - Men, Women, Youth Boys and Youth Girls - based on their last edition's performances.
When PSPB have players of the calibre of Soumyajit Ghosh, Soumyadeep Roy, Anthony Amalraj and Sanil Shetty in men's category and K Shamini, Poulomi Ghatak, Ankita Das and Madhurika Patkar in the women's section, things become all the more easy as they are certain for yet another shot at the titles.
This also means the next best teams, including the Railway Sports Promotion Board (RSPB) men and women paddlers as well as the Airports Authority of India (AAI) players in the Youth Boys and Girls sections, both of whom have been seeded behind the PSPB, will have to put up much bigger fights to dethrone their rivals.
Total 19 institutional teams are in the fray here.
All the teams have been divided into six and four groups respectively with two teams from each group qualifying into the second stage. The season opener is also important for all those participating as only the top two teams from men and women categories will make it to the Senior Inter-State National Championships to be held in January next year.
Similarly, the gold medal winners from the youth boys and youth girls will qualify for the Junior Inter-State and National Championships to be held at Guwahati in December this year. The youth events here will be played on a round-robin format.
The team championships finals in the men and women's categories will be played on Saturday. The championships carries total prize of Rs 3.32 lakh.
Ganeshan Neelakanta Iyer will be the competition manager while A S Kler the chief referee.
