Jodhpur: After completion of the season’s two big events—Inter-Institutional and National Ranking (South Zone)—the domestic calendar’s caravan now moves to the Central Zone for the second of the National Ranking Table Tennis championships.
The six-day event, to be held in this fort city at the Gaushala Indoor Stadium between September 23 and 28, will see in action over 550 top padlers of the country, including national champions in men and women, Anthony Amalraj and Poulomi Ghatak besides the Inter-Institutional champion Soumyajit Ghosh and a host of others aspiring to break into the top rankings.
The championships, organised by the Jodhpur District Table Tennis Association under the aegis of Rajasthan Table Tennis Association, is of great significance for all participants, more so to the juniors, whose performance here will be watched and assessed by national selectors as they sit together to pick the probables for the World Junior Championships to be held in Hyderabad later this year.
Apart from the 10 gold medals up for grabs and vital ranking points, the paddlers competing in Men’s Singles, Women’s Singles, Youth Boys Singles, Youth Girls Singles, Junior Boys Singles, Junior Girls Singles, Sub Junior Boys Singles, Sub Junior Girls Singles, Cadet Boys Singles and Cadet Girls Singles are also stand to gain monetarily.
The championships carry a total prize money of Rs. 5.67 lakh, with the winner in the Men’s Singles carrying home Rs. 66,000/- and the winner in the Women’s Singles receiving the prize purse of Rs. 55,000. The prize money is offered to top eight positions in all the categories.
Incidentally, both Harmeet Desai and Soumyajit Ghosh, who skipped the last zonal at Bangalore will be in fray here after their engagements in Sweden. The likes of Soumyadeep Roy, Sanil Shetty, G. Sathiyan and Sourav Saha add teeth to men’s event while K Shamini, Ankita Das, Divya Deshpande will be the main attraction in the women’s section. Achanta Sharath Kamal, who won the men’s title in Bangalore, will miss out here as he has returned to Germany to resume his European circuit tournaments.
All these players, representing 22 states and 14 institutions, will have their tasks cut out in a meet that will see about 1500 matches over the next six days. The technical conduct of the tournament will be handled by 40 officials drawn from different states with A.S. Kler as the chief referee from New Delhi and Ganeshan Neelakant Iyer as the competition manager. As for the equipment support, Stag International will provide the flooring and tables. The matches will be played with Nittaku white balls.
The finals in sub-junior and Cadet categories are slated for Monday while the finals of the junior events will be held on Thursday. The concluding day on Friday will witness the finals in men, women, and Youth sections.
Incidentally, this will be the seventh occasion that the Jodhpur district will be hosting an event of this magnitude. They have, in the past, successfully hosted the INTAB Cup, India Cup besides other national ranking tournaments.
