THE Commonwealth Table Tennis Championships, involving most of the countries under the British Empire, have its unique place and significance in the history of the sport. Just born out of a meeting of the Commonwealth delegates after the 1969 world championships at Munich, the championships have acquired a reasonably vast recognition among nations that play the game in the Commonwealth.

Yet, the championships have been often found to gasp for breath with virtually no takers to host the bi-annual event, as proposed when first conceived. To begin with, the Commonwealth nations maintained the two-year schedule strictly, but slowly and steadily the gap got widened with countries not willing to host on a regular basis because of the expenses involved. However, in this sordid ‘who-will-host’ the event drama, the sole purpose has been lost because these championships have always provided greater opportunities to the paddles against one another from Commonwealth countris. Besides, the meet also gave the right kind of competitive atmosphere to them before every world championships.

Luckily, India have been in the forefront of organizing the Commonwealth Table Tennis Championships and it will host the fifth-the maximum so far by any nation. No other country in the history of Commonwealth championships has hosted the event more than twice. And biggest the surprise is that England, which is considered the Commonwealth head, has never hosted the championships while Australia has done so only once. Of course, Wales and Scotland, part of the United Kingdom, have at least conducted the championships twice each.

No doubt, India have immensely benefited from hosting these championships. From 1982 when it organized first championships before the Asian Games that year, to the last one in 2007 at Jaipur, Indian paddlers have found the event as a grooming ground, making considerable progress. Though India won its first men team’s title as well as men’s singles crown (Achanta Sharath Kamal) in 2004 at the Kuala Lumpur meet, it was the pair of Chetan Baboor and Subramanian Raman who went on to win the doubles title twice in succession, both at Glasgow (Scotland) and Singapore in 1997 and 2000. And India had to wait for nine-long years for another gold medal and it was provided by the doubles team of Sharath Kamal and Subajit Saha at Singapore in 2009. It is another matter that the pair went on to repeat the golden performance just a year later at the Commonwealth Games in New Delhi.

With New Delhi slated to host the 19th Commonwealth Championships (May5-10, 2013) at the Thyagraj Stadium, one can expect the Indians to perform well at home. A six-member men’s team-Sharath Kamal, Soumyajit Ghosh, Sanil Shetty, Harmeet Desai, Soumyadeep Roy and Anthony Amal Raj-and a five-member women’s squad, comprising K.Shamini, Mouma Das, Madhurika Patkar and Neha Aggarwal, are already in Sweden and China http://www.ttfi.org/news/show/593 respectively, preparing themselves for the two major events. They first one is the home championships in Commonwealth TT at New Delhi, followed by the World Championships (May 13-20, 2013) in Paris.

Both teams, training abroad under the protective wings of Coaches Kamalesh Mehta and Bhavani Mukherjee, realize the importance of the two events. Medals at home in the Commonwealth Championships will boost their morale before the Worlds in Paris. The TTFI, more importantly, the players do realize this. The same is the case with other participating nations which have swelled to 16-England, Wales, Scotland, Malaysia, Singapore, New Zealand, Nigeria, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Australia, South Africa and Canada, to name a few. Entries are pouring in and the overall participation could be to the tune of 160-170 players.

These are healthy indicators of a table tennis feast waiting to be served at the Thyagrja Stadium hall. The federation is all set to vigorously publicize the championships through different modes. The spectators’ presence in large number at the stadium will be real icing on the cake. We had tasted it during the 2010 CWG at home and we can vouch for their unstinted support this time too.