Chance for paddlers to gauge form
The road to the Commonwealth Games in October for India’s paddlers, led by Olympian Achanta Sharath Kamal, will begin at the India Open Pro Tour table tennis championship — a test event for the CWG which gets underway here on Wednesday.
The $100,000 event will be held at the newly renovated Yamuna Sports Complex and the players will get a feel of the venue set to host the table tennis events in the October 3 to 14 extravaganza.
Sharath, whose ranking plummeted 91, will look to regain form and score some vital points. Apart from him, the Indian men’s line-up consists of former national champion Subhajit Saha, Sourav Chakraborty and Soumyadeep Roy.
The event will see players from 13 countries including Pakistan, Chinese Taipei, Germany and Russia vie for the title.
“We can expect some good performances from the Indians. The women’s team have been in fine form with win over a powerful Chinese side at the World Championship recently,” Table Tennis Federation of India secretary general Dhanraj Choudhary told the media here on Tuesday.
The leading 16 players will get direct entry to the main draw while the remaining will be divided into eight groups where they play the round-robin league.
International Table Tennis Federation-appointed competition manager Didier Leroy believes that some of the top players gave the tournament a miss as it comes close on the heels of the Worlds.
World No. 15 Dimitrij Ovtcharov of Germany will be the highest-ranked player in the men’s draw followed by Singapore’s Ning Gao, who is ranked no. 26. Singapore’s world no. 10 Mengyu Yu will lead the women’s field.
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