The next UTT will take place in Chennai from August 22 to September 7.
The top players selected for the July 10 Ultimate Table Tennis 2024 draft are Sreeja Akula of India, Bernadette Szocs of Romania, Aruna Quadri of Nigeria, and Nina Mittelham of Germany.
The next UTT will take place in Chennai from August 22 to September 7.
There will be 47 players in the players draft, including 8 international men’s and women’s players, and 43 of them will be selected by the clubs.
The Indian athletes Sharath Kamal, Manika Batra, Harmeet Desai, Manav Thakkar, and G Sathiyan, who are headed to the Paris Olympics, have already been signed by their respective teams.
The world No. 24 Akula, who just won the WTT Contender solo championship, will draw interest from Indians.
The 16th-ranked Quadri will be making his fourth participation, while 29-year-old Bernadette will be making her third. Mittleham is going to play in her debut campaign.
While G Sathiyan will once more play for Dabang Delhi TTC, Sharath Kamal will stay with the Chennai Lions.
Goa Challengers will still be represented by Desai, and Thakkar will participate in U Mumba TT. Playing for Bengaluru Smashers is Manika.
Puneri Paltan, who will be joining new teams Jaipur Patriots and Ahmedabad SG Pipers in the first round of the draft, will not be keeping any of its players.
According to an announcement by the organizers, “all eight teams will be in action from the second round as each franchise will have to make a six-member squad, consisting of one foreign male and female player and two Indian male and female players.”
Ayhika Mukherjee and Sutirtha Mukherjee, bronze medallists in the Asian Games doubles, Yashaswini Ghorpade, Diya Chitale, Poymantee Baisya, and Taneesha Kotecha are among the other Indian athletes participating in the draft.
The other men’s players in the draft are Yashansh Malik, Jeet Chandra, Manush Shah, and Snehit SFR.
French silver medalists Jules Rolland and Lilian Bardet from the World Team Table Tennis Championships this year, four-time Olympian and 2015 European Championships doubles gold medallist Joao Monteiro of Portugal, Spanish doubles silver medallist Alvaro Robles of 2019 World Championships, and World No. 70 men’s player Cho Seungmin from South Korea are among the foreign players in the draft.
The women’s players in the draft include Sakura Mori (WR 27), Lily Zhang (WR 30), Orawan Paranang (WR 36), and Suthasini Sawettabut (WR 56) of Thailand, who competed for the Goa Challengers last year, the champion team.
This year, there will be two groups of four teams each in the competition.
“Each team will compete in five ties during the league stage, facing all other teams within their respective group once, alongside two randomly selected teams from the opposing group which will be determined through a draw,” said the release.