National Ranking Table Tennis Championship begins at Tarun Ram Phukan Indoor Stadium

Stars skip the meet including Manika

Our Sports Reporter

GUWAHATI: The 11th Sports National Ranking (East Zone) Table Tennis Championships kicked off at the Tarun Ram Phukan Indoor Stadium here today.

The group matches in both men and women singles got underway this morning. With three rounds in each section to be played today and the game would be continued till late night. At the end of the day, two qualifiers from each of 44 groups (men) and womn (31) will join the 16 men and eight women seeded players, who have been given direct entry into the main draw.

Meanwhile several star paddler of the country have decided to skip the tournament. The list included Manika Batra and Harmeet Desai, who played major roles in India’s medal winning performances at the 2018 CWG and Asian Games, A Sharath Kamal and G. Sathiyan.

In a release the secretary general of TTFI MP Singh said, “We want our players to compete in all domestic events. But when that doesn’t happen, we are obviously worried. We can understand a player not participating because of injury or circumstances that are really unavoidable. We are into framing new policies that we hope should arrest the irregularities.”