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This story is from August 13, 2019

Top stars converge in Thiruvananthapuram for South Zone TT Championships

Top table tennis stars including Asian and Commonwealth medallists will converge here at Jimmy George Indoor Stadium for National Ranking TT Championships 2019 (South Zone) from Wednesday.
Top stars converge in Thiruvananthapuram for South Zone TT Championships
Sharath Kamal. (PTI Photo)
THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Top table tennis stars including Asian and Commonwealth medallists will converge at Jimmy George Indoor Stadium for National Ranking TT Championships 2019 (South Zone) from Wednesday.
A Sharath Kamal, the face of Indian TT, Manav Thakkar, Sanil Shetty, Harmeet Desai all representing Petroleum Sports Promotion Board and Asian Games, Commonwealth Games, Asian and Commonwealth championships medallist are among the competitors.

Among the women, except Manika Batra and Archana Girish Kamath rest of cream of players including Sutirtha Mukherjee (HRN), Madhumita Patkar, Divya Deshpande, Pooja Sahasrabudhe all of PSPB, Sreeja Akula and Ayhika Mukherjee of Reserve Bank of India will be in action.
R Senthil Kumar is the lone seeded player from Kerala at 52nd rank in the national ranking. But 11 other Kerala players will be competing here while 12 girls from the hosts have been fielded.
2015 Kerala National Games doubles medallists Seraha Jacob (ranked 37th) and Maria Rony (48th) are representing Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, respectively.
The tournament will also witness the revival of team events but restricted to southern states - TN, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Pondicherry and hosts Kerala - after four decades. "The team events has been revived as part of expansion of the game which is rising rapidly particularly after the three editions of pro-league. Despite the 17-day affair in Delhi for the league, players are eager to get back to tournament mode," said N Ganeshan, president, Table Tennis Association of Kerala. "We're introducing an open category for the age group between 13 and 15 as per the Union sports ministry's directive," he added. The tournament is coming to Kerala after 15 years.

The total prize money is Rs7.50 lakh which will see competitions in men, women, youth, junior, sub-junior and cadet events for both boys and girls. At least 1,600 have entered for the championship which will conclude on August 21.
The championship will be played on 15 stag Americas tables, stag floorings and stag balls will be used for 8-day event.
The organisers will honour Sharath, the lone Padma Shri winner from TT and lone Olympian in TT from Kerala Ambika Radhika Suresh soon after the team final on Wednesday.
Kerala Squads
WOMEN: K Anekha, Adheena Latheef K, K Ankita, Aswathy Krishna, Krishnapriya Human Ramesh
MEN: Soham Bhattacharya, R Senthil Kumar, Udit Bhattacharya, Ranjit Benny, Sarbajit Guha
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