Top names for inaugural league
Some of the world’s biggest table tennis stars will descend on India for Ultimate Table Tennis — the country’s first professional table tennis league that will be held in Chennai, Delhi and Mumbai starting July 13.
Among the 24 foreign players (men and women) are world no. 7 Wong Chun Ting of Hong Kong who was also last year’s bronze medallist in the men’s World Cup.
At the Liebherr 2017 World Table Tennis Championships in Duesseldorf, Germany, Wong Ting reached the quarter-finals and won bronze in the mixed doubles alongside Doo Hoi Kem who is also participating.
Germany’s Petrissa Solja won bronze for the host country in mixed doubles alongside Fang Bo from China.
Ting and women’s no. 9, Han Ying of Germany, will get top billing in the inaugural edition.
Sharath Kamal and Manika Batra will lead a list of 12 men and 12 women from India in a pool of 48 players, a media release said on Monday.
The league will be held in Chennai (July 13 to 20), New Delhi (July 21 to 26) and Mumbai (July 27 to 30).
Each team will have eight players — four men and four women — with an equal mix of overseas and Indian players, apart from a foreign and an Indian coach.
There will be 15 league matches and individual matches will consist of three games on a race to 11. Each league match will have 27 points to play for and the four franchises with highest points in the league stage will advance to the semi-finals with the eventual champions receiving `1 crore, the runners-up `75 lakh and losing semi-finalists `50 lakh each. The remaining `25 lakh, from a total purse of `3 crore, will be presented to individual performers. List of players: Overseas: Men: 1. Wong Chun Ting, 2. Marcos Freitas (Portugal, world no. 16), 3. Tiago Apolonia (Portugal, no. 19), 4. Stefan Fegerl (Austria, no. 21), 5. Kou Lei (Ukraine, no.24), 6. Panagiotis Gionis (Greece, no.36), 7. Aruna Quadri (Nigeria, no. 37), 8. Andrej Gacina (Croatia, no.38), 9. Par Gerell (Sweden, no.44), 10. Li Ping (Qatar, no. 48), 11. Joao Monteiro (Portugal, no. 49), 12. Liam Pitchford (England, no. 51) Women: 1. Han Ying (Germany, no.9), 2. Wu Yang (China, no.12), 3. Doo Hoi Kem (Hong Kong, no.13), 4. Hu Melek (Turkey, no.15), 5. Liu Jia (Austria, no. 17), 6. Petrissa Solja (Germany, no.20), 7. Lee Ho Ching (Hong Kong, no. 33), 8. Yu Fu (Portugal, no.35), 9. Li Qian (Poland, no. 37), 10. Sabine Winter (Germany, no.39), 11. Polina Mikhailova (Russia, no.54), 12. Tetyana Bilenko (Ukraine, no.56) Indian players: Men: 1. A Sharath Kamal, 2. Soumyajit Ghosh, 3. Harmeet Desai, 4. Sathiyan Gnanasekaran, 5. Anthony Amalraj, 6. Sanil Shetty, 7. Jubin Kumar, 8. Manav Thakkar, 9. Ronit Bhanja, 10. Birdie Boro, 11. Arjun Ghosh, 12. Abhishek Yadav. Women: 1. Manika Batra, 2. Mouma Das, 3. Madhurika Patkar, 4. Pooja Sahasrabudhe, 5. Suthirtha Mukherjee, 6. Mousumi Paul, 7. Krittwika Sinha Roy, 8. Archana Kamath, 9. Moumita Dutta, 10. Amurtha Pushpak, 11. Priyadarshini Das, 12. Selena Deepti Selvakumar.