OSEL National Ranking TT Championship in Kochi from tomorrow

Kochi, Sep 4 (UNI) More than 425 players, including men's national champion A Sharath Kamal and women's No.1 Poulomi Ghatak, will participate in the OSEL National Ranking Table Tennis Championships (South Zone), which will start here tomorrow.

Addressing a press conference here today, tournament organising secretary S A S Navaz said a total of eight events consisting of more than 660 matches will be held during the four-day tournament at the Rajiv Gandhi Indoor Stadium at the Regional Sports Centre.

The events are Men's Singles, Women's Singles, Youth Boys Singles, Youth Girls Singles, Junior Boys Singles, Junior Girls Singles, Sub-Junior Boys Singles and Sub-Junior Girls Singles.

While the Sub-Junior finals are slated for September seven, the finals of the women and men singles will be held on September eighth.

International Refree from Kerala N Ganeshan will be the Chief Refree.

The championship will be conducted on ten new OSEL Rollway Tables and with the latest 40 mm Nittakku (Japanese) white balls, Mr Navas said.

Mr Ganesan said prize money worth more than Rs three lakh would be awarded at the end of the tournament, including Rs 40,000 for the Men's singles championship winner.

Both the men's and women's championships would consist of 64 draws each, he said.

The other top ranking players taking part in the championship are fromer national champion Subhajit Saha, Anirban Nandi, Pathik Mehta, Sibhaji Dutta, Anal Kashyap, Ranbir Das, Neha Aggarwal, Mouma Das and Mantu Ghosh.

During the inaugural function tomorrow, the autobiography of former national champion and Arjuna Awardee V Chandrasekhar would be released.

UNI