Good news for paddlers based at Guntur for they will have a separate enclosure at the NTR municipal indoor stadium to practice in days to come.
Guntur West MLA M. Venugopal Reddy, who took part in the inauguration of the 1{+s}{+t}Andhra Pradesh ranking table tennis tournament on Friday as the chief guest, said that along with provision for table tennis, the stadium would be air-conditioned. “I will discuss with the commissioner and take up these issues immediately,” he promised.
The Guntur District TT Association, with Mr. N.V. Gurudutt as its president, is making all efforts to make the tournament, held after two years, a grand success. “We are offering a total prize money of Rs.1 lakh for all age groups,” Mr. Gurudutt added.
Andhra Pradesh TT administrators S.M. Sultan, P. Viswanath, Chenchuramaiah, Electronics Systems India Limited executive manager Dasari Avnesh and NTR stadium secretary D. Srinivasa Rao took part in the function. Guntur, which dominated the table tennis scene in united AP in the early 80s, saw the game taking the backseat more so after the closure of B.R. Stadium. “We hosted a good number of national events and players like G.V.S. Veerabhadra Rao, Krishnaveni, Rama Sita, and Kotilingham played the game at the highest level and brought laurels to the district. The game suffered owing to lack of infrastructure. The words of MLA are very encouraging to us,” said Mr. Gurudutt.
