By Our Reporter
SHILLONG: In what would be a historic moment for the State, Deputy Chief Minister Bindo M Lanong would inaugurate the 12th South Asian Federation (SAF) Junior Table Tennis Championship, the first international sporting event in the region, at the Jawaharlal Nehru Indoor Stadium here on Sunday.
The championship would kick off on Sunday morning with hosts India playing Bhutan in the inaugural encounter. Indian paddlers will hope to secure the two places up for grabs in this year’s Asian Junior Championships in China when they begin their campaign in Shillong.
The SAF championships offer two tickets to the Asian Junior Championships to be held at Jiangyin next month. Keeping in mind the scenario, India have pitted strong teams in both the boys and girls sections and start the tournament as overwhelming favourites.
Apart from the boys and girls section, competitions will also be held in junior and cadet divisions.
Top junior paddlers of the country including Mallika Bhandarkar, who had won the SAF Junior TT Championship in 2009 and 2010, will battle it out in the three-day event.
Meanwhile, for the first time, the Championship would see the participation of the all the seven SAF nations viz. India, Bhutan, Nepal, Pakistan, Maldives, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.
Till the filing of this report apart from hosts India, Bhutan and Bangladesh had reached the pine city while the Pakistan team had arrived in Guwahati. Nepal, Sri Lanka and Maldives are slated to arrive on Sunday. “We are still awaiting confirmation on the arrival of the Maldives team,” said a member of the organizing committee.
Expressing happiness at the preparations for the tourney, Table Tennis Federation of India (TTFI) secretary general DR Chaudhury said, “Everything promised during my last visit has been delivered and I am very happy at the way things are taking shape.”
“The facilities provided by Meghalaya Table Tennis Association (MTTA) is one of the best in the world. They (MTTA) had done a good job while hosting the Junior Nationals in 2005 and hence the Federation had faith in their capabilities to host a bigger event.”
Meanwhile, TTFI Treasurer, PK Bawa said, “The TTFI wishes to thank the Meghalaya government for the whole hearted support being extended to the tournament. Besides providing monetary support, various government departments are also forthcoming. I am yet to see this kind of cooperation elsewhere.”
The Championship is also an opportunity to highlight Meghalaya’s ’s potentiality in terms of sports. It may be mentioned that the State Government is the principle sponsor of the event which has an estimated budget of Rs 50 lakh.
Indian squad:
Boys:
Junior: Sudhanshu Grover, Abhishek Yadav, Vivek Bhargava, R Anandhraj.
Cadet: Birdie Boro, Utkarsh Gupta, Lalrinpuia.
Girls:
Junior: T Reeth Rishya, Mallika Bhandarkar, Narasimha Priya, Senhora D’souza.
Cadet:
Karnam Spoorthy, Sutirtha Mukherjee, Ayihika Mukherjee.
Coaches: V Seshadri and Sandeep Gupta. (Squad taken from PTI)