Indian team for Asian table tennis championships announced

New Delhi, February 21, 2012: India’s top five paddlers both in the men and women sections, led by Achanta Sharath Kamal and Poulmi Ghatak, will represent the country in the Asian Table Tennis Championships, to be held at Macau between February 23 and March 1.

The other members of the men’s team include reigning national champion A.Amalraj, Subhajit Saha, Sanil Shetty and Soumyajeet Ghosh and in the women’s category it will be Mouma Das, K. Shamini, Mousumi Paul and Ankita Das besides national champion Poulami Ghatak.

All the paddlers will compete both in the team as well as individual championships. The teams were selected on the basis of their performances both at the senior nationals held at Lucknow last month and before this season.

The teams will be accompanied by foreign coach Leszek Kucharski and national coach Bhawani Mukherji. Arun Banerjee will be the team manager.

Both the coaches felt that the team was capable of putting their best foot forward in the championships which will see world-beaters China, Japan, Taipei, South Korea and Singapore. “Our boys and girls have the potential to come good against even the toughest and they are wary of their opponents’ strengths,” said the Polish coach Kucharski today on the eve of the departure of the team.

Training in Austria

Meanwhile, the Table Tennis Federation of India has decided to send all the team members to the Werner Schlager Academy in Austria to train and prepare for both the World Table Tennis Championship to be held at Dortmund (Germany) from March 25 to April 1 and the subsequent Olympic Qualification to be held at Hong-Kong between April from 19 and 22.

They will be joined at the academy by Soumyadeep Roy, Divya Deshpande and coach Arup Basak, said TTFI secretary-general Dhanraj Choudhary.

A TTFI Press release