OSEL National Table Tennis Championships from tomorrow

Kochi, Sep 4 (UNI) More than 425 players, including men's national champion A Sharath Kamal and women's champion Poulomi Ghatak, will participate in the OSEL National Ranking Table Tennis Championships (South Zone) here tomorrow.

Addressing a press conference today, tournament organising Secretary S A S Navaz said eight events consisting of more than 660 matches would be held during the four-day tournament.

The events would include singles for men, youth boys, junior boys, sub-junior boys and also for women, youth girls, junior girls and sub-junior girls.

While the sub-junior finals were slated for September seven, the finals of the women's and men's singles would be held on September eight.

N Ganeshan of Kerala would be the chief referee.

The championship would be conducted on ten new OSEL Rollway Tables and with the latest 40 mm Nittakku (Japanese) white balls, Mr Navaz 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 champion. Both the men's and women's championships would consist of 64 draws each.

The other top ranking players taking part in the championship were former 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