Nine paddlers — four boys and five girls who did well at the South Asian junior table tennis championships were, on Saturday, selected to represent India at the Guatemala junior and cadet Open from August 7 to 10.
Anirban Ghosh, Birdie Boro, Lalrinpuia and Arjun Ghosh in the boys’ section and Sagarika Mukherjee, Harsha Vardhini, Akula Sreeja, Moumita Dutta and Aishwarya Pathak in the girls’ category were picked by the junior selection committee that witnessed the championships here. “We want to give them early exposure to competing in international events,” said TTFI general secretary Dharaj Choudhary.
“Two new coaches — Raj Shanmugam Subramaniam and Jyoti Shah — will accompany the team to Guatemala City. The team will leave on Sunday,” Choudhary added.
The TTFI will also send an eight-member Youth team which will compete in the 2013 ITTF World Tour Brazil Open to be held at Santos between August 8 and 11.
G. Sathiyan, Nitin Thiruvengadam, Soumyajit Ghosh and Harmeet Desai in the youth boys’ section and Kritiwika Sinharoy, Ankita Das, Suthirtha Mukherjee and Manika Batra in the girls’ category have been selected.
The youth teams will be accompanied by coaches Muralidhara Rao Achanta and Vijayasarathi Seshadri. This squad will leave for Sao Paulo on Monday.
Meanwhile, the TTFI selection committee has chosen Abhishek Yadav and Suthirtha Mukherjee to represent the country at the second Asia Youth Games to be held at Nanjing, China, from August 16 to 24.
