TT team gets monetary boost before leaving for World Championship

New Delhi, Apr 23 (UNI) Hours before taking off for Bremen, Germany for the World Championship, Indian TT team received a morale-booster with the Table Tennis Federation of India disbursing cash rewards to the paddlers for their Commonwealth Games' exploits.

Indian paddlers, who grabbed two golds and a bronze at the Melbourne extravaganza last month, were feted by the federation at function here last night.

Men singles gold medallist Achanta Sharath Kamal received a cheque to Rs one lakh and a gold coin while his team mates -- Soumyadeep Roy, Shibaji Datta and Subhajit Saha -- got Rs 25000 each and a gold coin.

The bronze medallist women team, which included Poulumi Ghatak, Mouma Das, Nandita Saha, Kasturi Chakraborty received Rs 15000 and gold medal each.

Coaches, Benone Gregore and Mantu Ghosh also went richer by Rs 25000.

Meanwhile, coach Gregore and his protege Sharath sounded confident of starting in Bremen from where they left in Melbourne.

While Indian men will be competing in the second division, the eves have a really tough job in hand in the elite group of the championship getting underway tomorrow.

''The competition is gonna be very tough, make no mistake but we (the men's team) have a realistic chance of qualifying for the next season's championship division,'' Gregore said on the sidelines of the felicitation function.

Indian men are in in Group H alongside Bulgaria, US, Singapore, Finland and Turkey while women have even more formidable competition with China, Romania, Belarus, Czech Republic and Serbia in their group.

''After Melbourne, our confidence level is very high. We beat higher-ranked Singapore there and we can beat again. I am sure we will win the gold in the second division,'' Sharath Kamal echoed.

UNI DH RR KN1207