The Indians who will receive the wild cards for the main draw of the WTT Star Contender table tennis tournament to be held here from March 25 to 30 have been confirmed.
For the men’s competition, wild card entries were granted to Indians SFR Snehit, Manush Shah, and to international players Park Ganghyeon (Korea) and Kim Taehyun of Malta. In the women’s division, all four wild card recipients—Sutirtha Mukherjee, Swastika Ghosh, Diya Chitale, and Krittwika Sinha Roy—are from India.
“The two more wild card WTT nominations will be Indians and the names will be decided in consultation between Table Tennis Federation of India and the Indian team’s head coach Massimo Costantini while the one WTT youth nomination, mostly likely be a foreigner, will be announced soon,” Deepak Malik, co-founder and COO of Stupa Analytics, organiser of WTT Star Contender, told Sportstar here on Monday, on the sidelines of the Dream Sports Foundation u-15 table tennis tournament.
| Video Credit:
K. Keerthivasan
To honor Sharath Kamal’s career, an exhibition match will be held on March 29th, featuring Brazil’s Hugo Calderano (World No. 6), Egypt’s Omar Assar (World No. 17), and the World No. 42 Sharath Kamal to give a farewell to the Indian star.
“It was Sharath’s idea to play with them. In fact, Omar has planned to get a gift for Sharath Kamal as this will be the Indian paddler’s farewell tournament,” revealed Deepak.
The WTT Star Contender organisers have planned to have nine practice tables at the badminton hall (near the Nehru ‘B’ ground). All the quarterfinals of the main draw (men & women) will be held on one show table from 11 a.m.
Fans will get to meet some of the top-ranked players in the world including Japan’s Tomokazu Harimoto (World No.4), Calderano to Hina Hayata of Japan (World No .5 in women) at the Nehru Indoor Stadium. “We will have a fan zone on March 29 and 30 at the tournament venue where fans can meet & greet the star paddlers,” added Deepak.
WTT’s CEO Steve Danton is expected to be in the city on March 28 to witness the tournament.
