May 08, 2008	Thursday	Jamadi-ul-Awwal 2, 1429

KARACHI, May 7: Two foreign coaches have been assigned a target that an under-18 player should win the men’s singles crown in the National table tennis championship later this year.

“The target has been set by the Pakistan Table Tennis Federation [PTTF] that wanted to discover the youth talent, aimed at reviving the glorious past,” a PTTF official confided to Dawn on Wednesday.

The two experts arrived in Pakistan last November on a long-term coaching assignment to groom paddlers for the upcoming international events including the South Asian Federation (SAF) Games.

“Performances of the senior players have been stagnant and it is time the juniors should replace them on merit,” president of the PTTF S.M. Sibtain said.

The national championship is slated to take place either in Lahore or Karachi at the end of this year.

The PTTF official said the budding youngsters, who are in the 11-17 age bracket, are catching up the style and techniques fast and are likely to achieve perfection with the passage of time.

Sibtain further said that he along with the two coaches observed the performance of the players during the Pakistan international invitational table tennis tournament which ended in Lahore the other day.

Meanwhile, a national training camp is due to commence in Quetta from May 16. The camp will last for two months.

A similar international invitational tournament will be staged in the Balochistan capital from July 7, Sibtain said, adding that Iran has shown its willingness to participate in the event.