Vijayawada, September 9: A 20-member Indian squad, comprising Junior and Sub-Junior Boys and Girls, who are competing in the ongoing South Zone National Ranking Table Tennis Championships here, would be leaving for Varazdin tonight after the finals to participate in the Croatia and Serbia Open Junior Circuit events.

The ITTF Premium Croatia Junior and Cadet Open, to be held at Varazdin, begins on September 12 and continues throughSeptember 16. Soon after, the team members would leave for the Premium World Junior Circuit Serbia Junior and Cadet Open, beginning at Belgrade, from September 19 to 23.

On the twin-tours, the players will be accompanied by four coaches who will join the players reaching Delhi from here before flying out to Varazdin past midnight.

The exposure trips, which are part of the TTFI programme as approved under Sports Authority of India’s ACTC, will come in handy for the juniors—some of them are first-times—to compete among the best and and showcase their talent. Additionally, these premium events also enable the players to log international points to soar up their rankings. The players will be competing both in team and individual events.

“Competing in Premium events gets the players maximum points and that’s precisely what our plans are. In addition, such trips give our players very good opportunity to play against the best and gain confidence.  We need to keep our next supply line ready,” said Secretary General M.P. Singh, adding, “I wish the players best of luck.”

The squads:

Junior Boys: Manush Shah, Raegan Albuquerque, Anukram Jain, Deepit R. Patil, Akash Pal and Yashansh Malik.

Junior Girls: Anushka Kutumbale, Swastika Ghosh, Prapti Sen, Poymantee Baisya, Radhapriya Goel and Diya Chitale.

Sub-Junior Boys: Payas Jain, Vishwa Deenadayalan, Aadarsh Om Chetri and Divyansh Srivastava.

Sub-Junior Girls: Anargaya Manjunath, Lakshita Narang, Karruna Gajendran and Kavyashree Baskar.

Coaches: Mohammad Ibrahim Khan, Krunal Telang, Subhajit Saha and Jyoti Shah.