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Achanta Sharath Kamal and Mouma Das will lead the Indian challenge in the men's and women's sections respectively of the Indian Open ITTF Pro Tour event beginning here from Wednesday.
The five-day event will see over 100 players from 13 countries participate for a total prize money of $1,00,000 tournament the biggest purse for a table tennis tournament in India ever and a test event for the Commonwealth Games in October. The Indians have been practicing at the venue for the past one week and will hope to cash in on the advantage of being familiar with the conditions.
Played on a league-cum-knockout format, the event will have the top 16 players each in the men's and women's sections seeded directly into the main draw, while the rest of the players will play on a round-robin format in eight groups, with the top two from each group qualifying for the knockout stages.
Besides the men's and women's singles, competition will be held in men's and women's doubles and under-21 boys' and girls singles. While the first two days will see action in the qualifying rounds, the main draw will be played from Friday onwards.
Besides Sharath, the highest-ranked Indian in the world (No 91), the Indian challenge in the men's draw will include former national champion Subhajit Saha, Sourav Chakraborty and Soumyadeep Roy. The Indian men had an impressive outing in the recent World Team Championships in Moscow last month and would be hoping to carry on the good show. Among women, reigning national champion Poulomi Ghatak and Das will be high on confidence coming into the tournament after their good show in Moscow. A total of 46 Indian players will be seen in action in the tournament. World No. 15 Dimitrij Ovtcharov of Germany is the highest ranked player in the men's draw while Singapore's Yu Mengyu (world No. 10) is the top-ranked women's player in the competition.
"There will be eight competition tables for the tournament and 10 international umpires from abroad to conduct the event", Dhanraj Choudhary, secretary general of Table Tennis Federation of India (TTFI) said.
Competition manager Didier Leroy of the International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF) said, "I'm happy to be in India for the event. As countries like Japan, Korea are participating we expect good competition."
Chinese skip meetPaddlers from Pakistan, Chinese Taipei, Germany and Russia will be participating in the event though Asian powerhouses China will be conspicuous by their absence.
Having seen several events marred by excess security and a lack of coordination and information, the TTFI has decided to not only have volunteers at all venue gates to guide the media and the visitors, they have also clarified that only accredited journalists will be allowed in.
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