Vadodara, January 5: The significance of the 11Even Sports 78th Junior and Youth National Championships, getting underway at the SAMA Indoor Complex here from tomorrow, could not have been put as succinctly as Dhanraj Choudhary, Secretary General of the Table Tennis Federation of India (TTFI) did here today.

Addressing the media persons at the Lakshmi Vilas Palace banquet hall, the secretary general said that 12 players from each section—Junior Boys and Junior Girls, Youth Boys and Youth Girls—will be selected for the India camps as the federation, in tune with the Sports Ministry’s initiative, to help them prepare for the 2020 and 2024 Olympics.

With the Sports Ministry and the Sports Authority of India (SAI) giving the go-ahead, TTFI is looking to invest on youngsters who will go a long way and last beyond the 2024 Games. Of course, there are also plans afoot to induct an equal number of Sub-Junior Boys and Girls but there will be a process of weeding out which will follow after seeing the players’ progress at the camps.

“It presents a great opportunity to all players that will be on view here to grab the opportunity with both hands,” said Choudhary as a word of encouragement to the teams (32 in Junior and Youth Boys and 29 in Junior and Youth Girls) that will participate in the nationals.

Earlier, Jayaben Thakkar, president of the Table Tennis Association of Baroda, welcomed the media and spoke on the salient features of the championships which the district association was hosting.

The other dignitaries on the dais included GSTTA secretary Haresh Sangtani, vice-president of TTAB Rajat Bhargava and secretary Kalpesh Thakkar.

On technical aspects, competition manager N. Ganeshan said that the teams divided into eight groups will play the round-robin league in the first stages with each group throwing up just two qualifiers who will go onto play the second stages of the championships, which will be played on a knockout basis.

Similarly, Ganeshan said, the singles events which begin from Day 4 will see over 600 players divided into groups of three and four for the first stages event. One qualifier from each group will go on to play the knockout stage matches where they will be joined by eight top-ranked players, who will be given the seeding.

More than 500 players and 70 coaches/Managers will be participating in the six-day Championships with HVR Sports as the associate sponsors and supported by the Sports Authority of Gujarat.  The other sponsors of the event are IOCL, GAIL, Reliance Industries Ltd, Airport Authority of India and STIGA

The Championships will also carry a prize purse of Rs.4.76 lakh with the top-eight players sharing the booty according to their positions obtained.

According to competition manager, the chief referee for the championships will be A.S. Kler and he will be assisted by three deputy referees and about 60 Blue Badge, international and national umpires.

Sixteen Stiga tables Stiga balls will be used for the championships, which are jointly organized by the Gujarat State Table Tennis Association and Table Tennis Association of Baroda, said Ganeshan.  Incidentally, the GSTTA has hosted this championships twice before in 2009 at Surat and in 2011 at Ahmedabad .

An organising committee, headed by Vipul Mittra, President GSTTA, along with Milind Torawane, Chairman GSTTA and Jayaben Thakkar, President TTAB, has been formed to oversee the conduct of the Championships.  Haresh Sangtani and Shri Kalpesh Thakkar will be the Organising Secretaries of the Championships.

The inauguration of the championships will be held at 1000 hrs on Friday with Rajendra Trivedi, Hon’ble Minister for Sports, Gujarat, as the chief guest. Vipul Mittra will preside while SK Dhar Gupta, ED, Gujarat Refinery–IOCL, Milind Torawane, and D R Choudhary, TTFI Secretary General will be Guests of honour.

The team championships finals are slated in the afternoon on January 8 and the individual finals on January 11.