Tags:
Journalism of Courage
LUCKNOW, JANUARY 9: There have been mixed reactions from players on the new format being adopted for open events over the last two years in the National and Inter-State Table Tennis Championships.
The new format allows only the top eight-ranked players to move into the main draw while others are required to play qualifying matches on a league basis to make it to the main draw. In the 61st Sahara Nationals now in progress at the Ambedkar Stadium hall here, 207 men players have been divided into 52 groups. The winners from each group join the eight in the main draw. Similarly, the women8217;s section has 32 groups for 60 players.
The advantage is that players coming from far-away states get to play more than one match and have an even chance of qualifying for the main draw. In the earlier knockout format, they were most likely to be eliminated after one loss.
There are other players who feel that two days of qualifying rounds are tough as the winners will be required to play more important matches in the maindraw.
The only notable surprise of the day was the defeat of Moumita Dutta of Railways at the hands of Minu Dhawan of Punjab in Group 7. Minu won 21-18, 21-18. Some of the prominent winners included R Rajesh TN, Rajiv Chai Delhi, KS Chakravarty TN, George Joseph Mah, Souvik Dey, Vinay Chopra Punjab, Deepak Thukral Punjab, Subhajit Saha, S Sriram, S Ramaswamy PSCB, Dheeraj Arora, Vinay Chopra and Himansh P Kala all Delhi.
Doubles seedings: Men: 1 Chetan Baboor-S Raman 2 Soumyadeep Roy-Subhajit Saha 3 Arup Basak-Anal Kashyap 4 Shibaji Dutta-Ganesh Kundu 5 S Choudhary-Ranveer Das 6 Bhushan Thakur-Nipur Santra 7 Deepak Thukral-Vaneet Chopra 8 R Rajesh-G Deepak Kumar.Women: 1 Poulami Ghatak-Mouma Das 2 Anindita Chakraborty-Mantu Ghosh 3 MS Mythili-NR Indu 4 Bhuvaneswari-T Pradeepa 5 Debasmita Das-Kasturi Chakraborty 6 Sushmita Roy-Avanti Sinha 7 Ritu Ghorpade-Ekta Bhambri 8 A Radhika-Archana Vishwanath.
Mixed doubles: 1 S Raman-Poulami Ghatak 2 Arup Basak-Mouma Das.
