TT begins today in Shillong

From a Correspondent

SHILLONG, Feb 5: The Indian table tennis team are quietly confident that they have quality players who will make a clean sweep of the discipline at the 12th South Asian Games 2016.

India won all seven gold medals on offer at the last edition of the Games in 2010 and coach and former tiol champion Arup Basak feels sure they can repeat that performance.

"In table tennis we are going to get all the titles," Basak said today while his top players were warming up. "We have in our team the current (women's) tiol champion Manika Batra and (men's) tiol champion Anthony Amalraj," he informed.

Table tennis will begin at the Jawaharlal Nehru Indoor Sports Hall, Polo, here tomorrow morning at 8:30am with team events. Men's singles and doubles, women's singles and doubles, mixed doubles, men's team and women's team events will be held at the Games from February 6-10, with a total of seven gold medals on offer.

India also claimed five silver last time around, with Sri Lanka bagging two. Yesterday the Lankan team's mager Commander Anil Bowatte expressed some confidence that his "best ever team" could create an upset and beat India in a few events.

Today the Pakistan team were also practising at the same time as India and their mager Kifayat Khan said he has "good expectations" of the Pakistan contingent, especially from Ali Sajjad Faisal and Asim Qureshi.

The first and second rounds of the men's and women's team events will take place tomorrow, with the third round, semifils and fils on Sunday. Monday will see the start of the individual events.