New Delhi, August 16: The Petroleum Sports Promotion Board (PSPB), like in the past, has received top billing in all the four team events—men, women, youth boys and youth girls—of the AAI 44th Inter-Institutional Table Tennis Championships, being held at the Thyagraj Stadium here between August 17 and 22.

Based on last year’s performance, the Railway Sports Promotion Board’s men have grimly held on to the second spot behind PSPB while the Airports Authority of India’s women are seeded second. Similarly, the hosts’ investment in Youth Boys and Youth Girls have paid dividends as they have retained the second spots in these two sections.

The championships, which are the season opener and the second-most important after the nationals in the TTFI calendar, got a boost when the AAI agreed to sponsor the event wholesome. As in the past, championships will yet again see country’s top paddlers, except A. Sharath Kamal and K. Shamini, competing first in team events before locking horns for individual glory from the fourth day.

The draws for the team championships were here held at the TTFI office under the supervision of TTFI secretary-general D.R. Choudhary.

With 18 institutions having entered the championships as many men’s teams and 12 in women’s section have been divided into six and four groups, respectively, to play the first stage. Only two teams from each group will qualify for the second stage.

Incidentally, the Institutional championships being the selection event for the Senior Inter-State and National Championships, to be held at Pondicherry in January 2015, only two top teams in both the events will qualify for the nationals.

With just five teams each competing in the Youth Boys and Youth Girls sections, it will be a round-robin league affair for them with the top team from both categories qualifying for the Junior and Youth Inter-State National Championships to be held at Alleppey between November 25 and 30this year.

The individual events which follow the team championships will also see the participation of players from different states, apart from institutions, making it a tough competition for all the paddlers.

Though Achanta Sharath Kamal, playing in German League, and an injured K. Shamini having decided to give it a miss players like Soumyajit Ghosh, Sanil Shetty, A. Amalraj and Harmeet Desai in the men’s category, and Ankita Das, Manika Batra and Madhurika Patkar, to name a few, in the women’s section will all be vying for the top honours both for their institutions and states besides individually trying to prove their points.

In the normal course, the championships carry a total prize purse of Rs. 3.32 lakh, with the top eight men and women sharing the spoils. However, as a good gesture the AAI, the hosts of the championships, have decided to give away prize money to the tune of Rs. 75,000 for the doubles events as well—the winners of men’s doubles, women doubles and mixed doubles each getting Rs. 25,000 each.