CHENNAI: 2022 Birmingham Games medallist Sreeja Akula was signed by Dabang Delhi while Nigeria’s Quadri Aruna will play for U Mumba TT in season four of the Ultimate Table Tennis league as the player draft came to an end on Friday. The UTT Season 4 is scheduled at the Balewadi Sports Complex in Pune from July 13.
With the fourth season happening after a span of four years (the last edition was in 2019), Sharath Kamal (Chennai Lions), Sathiyan G (Dabang Delhi), Manika Batra (Bengaluru Smashers) and Manav Thakkar (U Mumba TT) had been retained by the respective teams ahead of the draft. Each team allowed to pick four Indians (two male and female) and a couple of overseas stars (one male and female) in the draft.
Anthony Amalraj and Harmeet Desai, both part of the India team that won bronze in the 2018 Asian Games, and Spain’s Alvaro Robles were signed by Goa Challengers. The first player to be picked up in the draft was Egypt’s Omar Assar, who was followed by Thailand’s Suthasini Sawettabut.
Assar was signed by Puneri Paltan while Goa secured the services of Suthasini. Yangzi Liu from Australia will be Sharath’s teammate in Chennai, USA’s Lily Zhang went to U Mumba and Archana Kamath was selected by Pune.
Bengaluru Smashers owner Punit Balan was happy with the squad they have put together. “We got the players we had in mind. All the teams are balanced. Besides, of course, Manika, I am looking forward to Kirill, who can be dangerous for other foreign players. He has been promising at the UTT. He will be the main player to watch out for from our team, besides Manika,” Balan said.
Squads Bengaluru Smashers: Manika Batra, Kirill Gerassimenko (Kazakhstan), Sanil Shetty, Natalia Bajor (Poland), Poymantee Baisya, Ankur Bhattacharjee; Chennai Lions: Sharath Kamal, Yangzi Liu (Australia), Benedikt Duda (Germany), Sutirtha Mukherjee, Payas Jain, Prapti Sen; Dabang Delhi TTC: Sathiyan G, Sreeja Akula, Barbora Balazova (Slovakia), Ayhika Mukherjee, Anirban Ghosh, Jon Persson (Sweden); Goa Challengers: Suthasini Sawettabut (Thailand), Harmeet Desai, Alvaro Robles (Spain), Reeth Tennison, Kwittwika Sinha Roy, Anthony Amalraj; Puneri Paltan TTC: Omar Assar (Egypt), Manush Shah, Archana Kamath, Snehit SFR, Anusha Kutumbale, Hana Matelova (Czech Republic); U Mumba TT: Manav Thakkar, Lily Zhang (US), Quadri Aruna (Nigeria), Diya Chitale, Mouma Das, Sudhanshu Grover.
