Defending champions Chennai Lions take on Puneri Paltan Table Tennis at the Balewadi Sports Complex in Pune on July 13 in the opening match of season 4. The semi-finals are scheduled on July 28 and 29 while the grand finale will be held on July 30.
The Ultimate Table Tennis draft will feature a total of 40 players of which 36 will be available for selection after the retentions of Sharath Kamal (Chennai Lions), Sathiyan (Dabang Delhi TTC), Manika (Bengaluru Smashers) and Manav (U Mumba TT) was utilised by four of the six franchisees.
UTT has witnessed the emergence of talents such as Sathiyan Gnanasekaran, Manav Thakkar, Sutirtha Mukherjee and Manika Batra with their impressive performances in previous editions
The upcoming season of will feature six teams: Bengaluru Smashers, Chennai Lions, Dabang Delhi TTC, Goa Challengers, Puneri Paltan Table Tennis and U Mumba TT.
There are 11 players in the Indian table tennis team. At the World Table Tennis Championships, India has only won two medals. At the first 1926 event, the men's team and SRG Suppiah in the men's singles both won bronze.
One of Africa's greatest table tennis players, Aruna, who is currently ranked 12th in the world and played the first two seasons of UTT makes his return to India for a third time.
Sable, along with his coach Scott Simons are scheduled to train at St. Moritz from August 7th till August 16th (10 days), before heading out to Budapest, Hungary for the World Championships.
The franchise-based league, Ultimate Table Tennis (UTT), is under the auspices of the Table Tennis Federation of India (TTFI) has been a game changer for Indian table tennis since its inception in 2017.
Batra and her partner G Sathiyan lost 3-2 (9-11, 9-11, 11-8, 11-5, 7-11) in the mixed doubles quarter-finals to Japan's Tomokazu Harimoto and Hina Hayata, both world championships silver medallists.