TT programme enters competition stage

KARACHI: The ITTF South Asia Hopes Week and Challenge programme entered the competition stage as training and coaching sessions were completed at the Habib Public School’s table tennis gymnasium here on Thursday.

Competitions will be held on Friday (today) and Saturday (tomorrow).

After the competitions the International Table Tennis Federation’s (ITTF) head coach Ahmed Dawlatli of Egypt, who is conducting the programme, will send a report to the ITTF about the talent and performance of the players. The ITTF will then choose two players in the light of Ahmed’s report for the Asian Hopes Week which will be staged in East Asia later this year.

From there players will be picked to attend the World Hopes Week.

In the programme here, two boys and two girls each of 11 to 12 years of age, along with two coaches each from Pakistan and Sri Lanka, are participating.

The Maldives sent only one boy and a coach.

The Egyptian coach was seen working hard with the players. “Players from Pakistan and Sri Lanka are good. Maldives sent only one player and he is a bit weak but at this age I think he is not that bad,” coach Ahmed Dawlatli told ‘The News’ during tea break in the evening session on Thursday.

“It is a sort of exchange programme for players and coaches. The players are being taught different things about the game,” said Ahmed, a former star player of Egypt.

Ahmed was on Thursday joined by former Pakistan player Arif Khan after he returned from Thimpu, Bhutan, where he served as an ITTF instructor for a level-1 coaching course.

“The course was conducted smoothly. Twenty-four coaches out of 27 passed the course,” Arif told this correspondent.

Arif and Ahmed, playing as partners, qualified for the quarter-finals stage of the men’s doubles of the Invitational Tournament in Lagos, Nigeria, in 1975.

Participating players:

Pakistan: Umam Khwaja, Khwaja Habib-ur-Rehman, Maheen Sheraz, Maria Tazeem

Sri Lanka: Kavishka, Chandana, Sandun, Prabudhika

The Maldives: Rifaah Abdulla.