75th national table tennis championship begins tomorrow

Top paddlers of the country, including Sharath Kamal, Soumyajit Ghosh, K. Shamini, Mouma Das, Neha Agrawal will be seen in action here in the 75th Senior National and Inter-State Table Tennis Championship at the Pataliputra Sports Complex here from tomorrow..
About 600 players from 32 states and Union Territories (UTs), besides two institutional teams - the Petroleum Sports Promotion Board (PSPB) and Railways Sports Board (RSPB) - in Men's and 30 teams in women's sections including two Institutional ones - PSPB and Airport Authority of India (AAI) - will be vying for honours in the six-day tournament.
The men's and women's teams have been divided in eight groups, with the team championship played in round-robin leaugue-cum knock out basis, the Table Tennis Federation of India (TTFI) Secretary Dhanraj Chodhury said.

The national teams, comprising five-member squads in men's and women's categories, will be selected on the concluding day of the tournament for the forthcoming Commonwealth Table Tennis Championship to be held at Glasgow (Scotland) and Asian Games to be held in South Korea, he said.
He said a total sum of Rs. 9.5 lakh will be distributed as cash prize among the winners and runners and other ranked players along with trophy.
The Chairman of the Bihar Table Tennis Association Sanjay Singh said the round-robin matches will be played in 13 different international standard tables to be presided over by 55 officials, namely umpires and referees.

He said the live scoring updates will be on TTFI's website which would be a first.