Petroleum Sports Promotion Board received top billing in all four events of the 43rd inter-institutional table tennis championships, to be held at Dharward in Karnataka between August 22 and August 27.
Based on last year’s performance, Railway Sports Promotion Board were seeded second in team events of both the men’s and women’s sections, while teams from the Airports Authority of India were given second billing 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 Table Tennis Federation of India calendar, attracts the country’s top paddlers and will be hosted by the Dharward District Table Tennis Association.
The draws for the team events were here held at the TTFI office on Friday 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 compete 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 events will qualify for the nationals.
There will also be inter-institution youth boys and youth girls team events, with four and five teams each respectively. 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 the national championships in at Guwahati during December, 2013.
Leading players like Soumyajit Ghosh, Sanil Shetty and Soumyadeep Roy in the men’s category, and K. Shamini, Poulomi Ghatak, Ankita Das and Madhurika Patkar, to name a few, will vie for top honours both for their institutions besides individually trying to a prove a point.
The championships carry a total prize purse of `3.32 lakh, with the top eight sharing the spoils.