Two International TT meets gets underway tomorrow

Kolkata, Jun 17 (UNI) The South Asian Junior Table Tennis Championship and the Indian Junior Open, an ITTF world junior circuit meet, get underway tomorrow at the Netaji Indoor Stadium here.

The two meets will be played in succession with the regional meet preceding the other. Addressing the media today, technical committee chairman Dhanraj Choudhary said the Table Tennis Federation of India would make this meet as an annual event.

Six countries--Sri Lanka, Nepal, Pakistan, Maldives, Bangladesh and India, will be playing in the South Asian meet. Competitions will be held for team and individual in junior and cadet boys and girls sections.

The meet will also act as a qualifying tournament for the 12th Asian junior championship to be held at Kitakyushuu in Japan from July 24 to 29. The winner and runner-up teams will make it Asian meet.

While the team championship will be held in group league-cum- knockout basis, all the individual, both singles and doubles, will be in knockout basis. India will have Nepal and Bangladesh as other teams in group A of the boys' and girls' section while Sri Lanka, Maldives and Pakistan will form group B. Two top teams from each group will qualify for semifinals.

India had won all the gold medals in the last edition held in Sri Lanka.

The Indian Open meet has attracted 10 countries in the boys' section and nine in the girls' side. The six countries in fray for the South Asian meet will be joined by Hong Kong, Iran and Chinese Taipei to complete the lineup. This event carries a prize fund of 15,000 dollar.

The Indian squad: South Asian meet: Junior boys: Sanil Shankar Shetty, Sivananda Seshadri, Devesh Karia and Aniket Vinayak Koparkar.

Junior girls: Kumaresan Shamini, Neha Aggarwal, Prajakta Tipale and Ashlesha Bodas.

Cadet boys: Soumyajit Ghosh, G. Sathiyan, T. Nithin and Raj Mondal.

Cadet girls: Ankita Das, Shruti Tarnekar, Shreya Ghosh and Pooja Shasrabuddhe.

Coaches: Yen Wei and Ashok Kumar.

Manager Babu Sinha.

UNI BA PDS RN2101