After hockey, kabaddi, badminton and football, another sport has taken into the plunge into a professional league. On Thursday in Chennai at the Jawaharlal Nehru Indoor Stadium, the Ultimate Table Tennis League will begin in a bid to take ping-pong to new heights in India.

Unlike the Indian Premier League or the Indian Super League, the UTT will be competed between six club-based franchises. The six teams that will be competing for the prize are Maharashtra United, Oilmax-Stag Yoddhas, Dabbang Smashers TTC, iProspect Challengers, Falcons TTC (Bayside Spinners), and RP-SG Mavericks.

A prize money of Rs 3 crore will be awarded to the winner and the players on display are among the best in the world. There are a number of players ranked in the top 50 from the men’s and women’s division who will be competing in three of India’s state-of-the-art indoor stadiums. With a major sponsor like CEAT backing the tournament and Hindi movie star Aamir Khan lending his support, the tournament is striving to be world-class.

Where and for how long?

The tournament is go on till July 30, and is divided into the three legs. The first leg will be held in Chennai’s Jawaharlal Nehru Indoor Stadium (July 13-20). The scene then shifts to Delhi’s Thyagaraj Stadium, which will play hosts to the games that will be held between July 21 and 25.

The National Sports Club of India in Mumbai is where the final leg will be contested (July 26-30), which also includes the semi-finals and finals. The initial buzz around the tournament has been encouraging, especially after the smooth functioning of the ITTF-World Tour Indian Open in February.

Indian veteran Sharath Kamal has high hopes from the tournament. Addressing the topic of infrastructure, the 33-year-old believed that UTT can do wonders, “If UTT cannot address that problem, nothing can,” he said, in a press release.

The tournament begins with RP-SG Mavericks and Falcons TTC facing off with Jawaharlal Nehru Indoor Stadium hosting the six teams till 20 July. Chennai have been awarded the most number of games with eight, followed by Delhi, who will open the gates for spectators for five days.

In an effort to encourage fans to get behind the players, there will be no entry fee.

Rules

  • Each tie will comprise of nine games which will include the men’s singles, women’s singles and mixed doubles format. No player can feature twice in the men’s singles and women’s singles category featuring the foreign players. 
  • Overall, non player can play more than two matches, including mixed doubles. 
  • In each game, the first individual/pair to reach 11 points will be adjudged the winner in a best-of-three contest. For every win during a game, one point will be added to the team score. 
  • There will be no timeouts during the contests like the one seen in the Indian Premier League and Pro Kabaddi.
  • Only one table will be used for all the nine games. 
  • During league ties, the teams will have to play all 27 games despite securing the golden number of 14 points.

Players and Squads

The who’s who of Indian table tennis will be in attendance such as Kamal and Sanil Shetty. The biggest draw among the foreign contingent are Hong Kong’s Wong Chung Ting and Germany’s Hang Ying – both players are ranked inside the top-10. Much is expected from Nigeria’a Aruna Quadri too.

There are high hopes from rising stars Abhishek Yadav and Jubin Kumar. Just a week ago, Sutirtha Mukherjee, along with Pooja Sahasrabudhe clinched bronze at the Australian Open. Manav Thakkar has also been creating ripples in the junior circuit.

Falcons (Bayside Spinners):

Wu Yang, Lee Ho Ching, Par Gerell, Sanil Shetty, Liam Pitchford, iSutirtha Mukherjee, Arjun Ghosh, Priyadarshini Das

iProspect Challengers:

Han Ying, Petrissa Solja, Soumyajit Ghosh, Andrej Gacina, Mouma Das, Manav Thakkar, Moumita Dutta, Li Ping

Dabang Smashers:

Marcos Freitas, Hu Melek, Kou Lei, Sathiyan Gnanasekaran, Anthony Amalraj, Madhurika Patkar, Mousumi Paul, Teyyana Bilenko

Maharashtra United:

Wong Chun Ting, Liu Jia, Ju Fu, Harmeet Desai, Joao Montiero, Krittwika Sinha Roy. Pooja Sahasrabudhe, Ronit Bhanja,

OilMax Stag Yoddhas:

Hoi Kem, Gionis Panagiotis, Aruna Quadri, Manika Batra, Polina Mikhailova, Jubin Kumar, Abhishek Yadav, Selena Selvakumar

RP-SG Mavericks:

Stefan Fegerl, Sharath Kamal, Apolonia Tiago, Sofia Poloconova, Sabine Winter, Archana Kamath, Birdie Boro, Amrutha Pushpak