Petroleum Sports Promotion Board (PSPB) will start favourites to retain the men’s and women’s staff titles in addition to singles crowns on the 84th Inter-State National Table Tennis Championships, which start right here on Monday.
Fortunately, or sadly, such has been the domination of the PSPB groups and its particular person gamers through the years that it’s nearly unimaginable to breach their run.
PSPB men, who’ve dominated for 1 / 4 of a century, would go for the twenty sixth title right here, and it might be the identical mixture that achieved the feat in Shillong final 12 months.
The spearhead would be the Commonwealth Games a number of gold-medal winner Achanta Sharath Kamal, a 10-time singles champion, who could have the corporate of different CWG medal winners in G Sathiyan, the previous nationwide champion, Harmeet Desai, Sanil Shetty and Manav Thakkar, the youngest of the lot.
Their women’s staff, nevertheless, has ringed in a minor change with the induction of promising Yashashwini Ghorpade, who’s making waves along with her consistency as a youth participant.
Barring the Bengaluru lady, the squad has a well-recognized look to it and is in the palms of 2018 CWG golden lady Manika Batra, Archana Kamath, Reeth Rishya and Krittwika Sinha Roy. They did the trick final time in the corporate of Madhurika Patkar, and even with a little bit tweak in the script this time, the staff’s aim stays the identical.
After the primary three days, the {qualifications} in singles will start, however with entries touching about 900 in each sections, issues will attain the crescendo throughout the principle draw.
The attraction of the championships, aside from the utmost rating factors, is the prize purse of Rs 16 lakhs, with the singles winner getting ₹2.75 lakh in every part. All three doubles occasions will even have prize cash.
With the Asian Games scheduled this September-October in Hangzhou, China, the gamers will search rating factors to face a greater likelihood of getting the selectors’ nod.
