Bengaluru, September 3, 2012: The National Ranking (South
Zone) Table Tennis Championships, beginning at the Sri Kanteerava Indoor
Stadium from Tuesday, will see over 700 paddlers vying for top honours in 10
categories—men, women, youth boys and girls, junior boys and girls, sub-junior boys
and girls and cadet boys and girls.
With the men and women paddlers having gained valuable
points at the Inter-Institutional Championships last week in Kolkata, they will
look to consolidate their positions while the others competing in all other
sections of the championships here, the opening zonal event in a new season,
will use the opportunity to log their first points.
Hence the season-opening zonal will be of considerable
importance to the paddlers representing 22 states and 14 institutions and the
matches will be played on 15 tables.
The six-day championships will, however, miss in action the
reigning national champion and the recently-crowned Inter-Institutional
champions Anthony Amalraj and Soumyajit Ghosh owing to their engagements
abroad. But the meet will have its major attraction in top-ranked Indian in the
world, Achanta Sharath Kamal besides Sanil Shetty, Soumyadeep Roy, G. Sathiyan
and others.
On the distaff side, all top players including reigning
national and Inter-Institutional champion Poulomi Ghatak, former national
champion K. Shamini, Divya Deshpande, the runner-up at the Kolkata meet,
Olympian Ankita Das, Manika Batra, Mouma Das and Mausmi Paul are competing and
will look to finish on the podium to establish their credentials.
The championships offer Rs. 5,76,700 as the total prize
money and the men’s singles winner will take home Rs. 66,000 while the women’s
winner Rs 55,000. All title-winners in other categories will also get a
substantial purse.
During the press conference held today, organising secretary
K.S. Vasanth Kumar briefed the media of the arrangements made for the
successful conduct of the championships. They thanked the main sponsors Indian
Oil Servo and co-sponsors SBI, Canara Bank, TVS and others for their continued
support. This will be the second time in two years that KTTA will be hosting an
event of national importance, allotted by TTFI.
The Cadet and sub-junior finals are slated for Wednesday
while Junior and Youth finals will take place on Saturday. The women’s and
men’s finals will be on the concluding day on Sunday in that order.
The equipments for the championships are provided by Stag
Internationals.
The championships will see about 40 technical officials,
drawn from various states, taking care of the smooth conduct of the event. The
competition manager for the championships will be Ganeshan Neelakanta Iyer
while the chief referee will be R. Krishnan. He will be assisted by M.S. Dileep
Kumar from Tamil Nadu. The competition manager from the TTFI will be releasing
the seeding and ranking of players on September 4.
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