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Knee injury forces Baboor out

Suresh Parekh in Rajkot

The 1,400 capacity new indoor stadium in Rajkot is all decked to host the National ranking table tennis championships, its first major event since being inaugurated last month.

There will be 567 players, in eight groups, vying for honours from Thursday.

However, the tournament lost much of its glamour with the withdrawal of India's leading player Chetan Baboor, and Bhushan Thakur and Ganesh Kundu.

Baboor, said an official from the organising committee, injured his his knee just couple of days back and was unable to recover in time.

Though Rajkot is hosting a national ranking event for the first time, the response is more than overwhelming what with 80-plus entries coming from Gujarat itself. Of these, 59 are from Bhavnagar.

The national ranking tournaments are played in five zones - - North, East, South, West and Central - - and the rankings in them form the basis for selection to national teams for international tournaments.

This is the first tournament of the year and an important one for seeded players. And never mind that a couple of big names are missing, the likes of India No. 1 S.Raman, Shivaji Dutta, Arup Basak, Mouma Das, No.1 in the women's singles, Paulami Ghatak, N R Indu and Kasturi Chakraborty should be enough to provide a rich and engrossing fare for table tennis fans.

The Gujarat State Table Tennis Association and Harvey Club arer offering over a lakh in prize-money.