New Delhi: Petroleum Sports Promotion Board (PSPB), like in the past, has received top billing in all the four events of the 43rd Inter-Institutional Table Tennis Championships, to be held at Dharward (Karnataka) between August 22 and 27.
Based on last year’s performance, the Railway Sports Promotion Board (RSPB) has been seeded behind PSPB at the second spot in team events of both men and women sections, while it will be the Airports Authority of India (AAI) teams who have been seeded second in the Youth Boys and Youth Girls sections.
The championships, which are the season opener and the second-most important event after the nationals in the TTFI calendar, attracts country’s top paddlers and will be hosted by the Dharward District Table Tennis Association (DDTTA). The draws for the team events were here held at the TTFI office Friday morning under the supervision of TTFI secretary-general D.R. Choudhary.
With 19 institutions having entered the championships, 18 men’s teams and 12 women’s teams have been divided into six and four groups, respectively, to play in the first stage. Only two teams from each group will qualify for the second stage.
Incidentally, the Institutional championships being the selection event for the Senior Inter-State and National Championships, to be held at Bihar in January 2014, only two top teams in both the events will qualify for the nationals.
There will also be Inter-Institution Youth Boys and Youth Girls team events. We are having four teams in Youth Boys and five teams in the Youth Girls sections. The teams will play in the round-robin league format to determine final positions. The winner in each category will be eligible to participate in the Junior Inter-State and National Championships to be held at Guwahati during December, 2013
The individual events which follow the team championships will also see the participation of players from 15 states, apart from the institutions, making it a tough competition for all the paddlers.
Leading players like Soumyajit Ghosh, Sanil Shetty, Soumyadeep Roy in the men’s category, and K Shamini, Poulami Ghatak, Ankita Das and Madhurika Patkar, to name a few, will all be vying for top honours both for their institutions and states besides individually trying to a prove a point.
The championships carry a total prize purse of Rs. 3.32 lakh, with the top eight sharing the spoils.
