Table tennis: New format to be tried out in UTT--TOI

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CHENNAI: The inauguration of the CEAT Ultimate Table Tennis (UTT) on Monday here was a star-studded occasion. The tournament, which will start in Chennai on Thursday, will see players like world No. 8 Hong Kong star Wong Chun Ting, No 14 Marcos Freitas -taking part. Both were present on Monday , along with ace Indian paddlers A Sharath Kamal and Soumyajit Ghosh

The three-week long league will feature six franchises -Dabang Smashers TTC, RP-SG Mavericks, DHFL Maharashtra United, Falcons TTC, OilmaxStag Yoddhas and Shaze Challengers. The first two legs will be held in Chennai (July 13-20) and Delhi (21-25) before it shifts base to Mumbai (26-30) for the finale.



"The UTT is a great initiative to grab Indian audience's attention. I wish this happened 15 years ago, and I wouldn't have gone to Europe to play competitive TT. It's a great opportunity for the youngsters to prove their worth at this level," Sharath Kamal, who represents RP-SG Mavericks, said. To make the format competitive, the organizers have decided to make each match of three games. A tie will consist of nine matches, which will mean 27 games of action. The team winning more games will prevail in the tie.



It has also been decided that there will be no long-drawn tiebreaker if a game is tied at 10 all. The 11th point will be a golden point and will decide the winner. The top four teams from the league table will qualify for the play-offs. "It's an interesting format and I'll be playing it for the first time. It'll be interesting to see how the players adapt to the situations. It looks competitive as you won't get much time to recover when you play in best-of-three format," Wong Chun Ting, who lost in the quarterfinal of the recently-concluded World Championships in Dusseldorf, said.



Each franchise will comprise of a combination of overseas and Indian players -four men and four women, along with one Indian and one international coach each.

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