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Pepsi Asian Cup from today

Sports Reporter
The eighth Pepsi Aslan Cup labk-lennla tournament begins at the Bangladesh Krira Shikkhya Pmtislluin. Savar today.
Presidential Advisor for Youth and Sports Alamglr M A Kabir will Inaugurate the ten-nation. 36-player meet at the newly-constructed BKSP Indoor gymnasium at four this afternoon. President of the International Table Tennis Fed eration and a former world champion Ichiro Ortmura of Japan will attend the opening ceremony as a special Invitee of the Bangladesh Table Tennis . Federation, the organisers of the meet.
Twenty-fouf male and a dozen female paddlcrs from China. North Korea. South Korea. Japan. Chinese Taipei. Thailand. India. Pakistan. Iran and hosts Bangladesh will be vying for the mens and women's singles titles. The winners tn each section will earn US 9 3000 while the runners-up will settle for half that amount each - The total prize money in the men's section is US 8 11.000 and in the women’s US S 9.000.
Bangladesh will be represented by two male and one female player in the persons of Glas Atlq Ankhl. Saaduddin Ahmed Klsloo and Zulckha Akhlcr. M Hafizur Rahman is the manager.
All the participating teams with the exceptions of Thailand and India had reached Dhaka by yesterday afternoon. The Thais and the Indians were due late last night. |
According to the list of players available. Iran and Pak tstan. who have sent Iwo players each, will be competing in the men's singles only. China. North Korea. South Korea, and Japan have sent five players 'each, three men and two
women.
Defending champions China, runners-up at the ninth Asian Table Tennis Champi onshlps In Nigata Japan In 1989 North Korea, third Kccd South Korea, and
rth-placed Japan have al) sent their second string selections tn view of Ihc coming world championships scheduled lo be held in Japan next month. Yet. despflc the absence of their top players, these four nations arc expected to provide the keenest competition and should perform at a very high level. In the
Nfgata ATTC. 19 nations had taken part with Bangladesh placing a poor 17th.
According lo the draw, held yesterday al the BTTF office with Chief Umpire and technical Delegate A M Lele of India In the chair, the first and third ranked players will meet in the first robin league matches of their respective groups. In the second leg. the second ranked player will play the third ranked while the first ranked in each group will face the second ranked tomorrow
Following are the groupings: MEN : Group A -Wu Wen Chia of Taipei. Adul Riduangdc of Thailand and S. Sriam of India: Group B-Wang Yonggang of China. LI Sung-Il of DPR Korea and Gias Allq Ankhl of Bangladesh: Group C - Kang Hc-Chan of South Korea. Takuya Tanaka of Japan and XiOng Kc of China: Group D-Kim Guk-Chol of DPRK. Majid Reza Ehteshamzadeh of Iran and Yoji Morimoto of Japan: Group E - Fatjad Saif of Pakistan. Chang Wei Wei of China and l-ee Chui Sung of South Korea: Group F - Takehtro Watanabe of Japan. Chu Kyo
Sung of South Korea, and VI-chtt llialcrngpol of Thailand: Group G Ko Chun-Ho of DPRK. Feng Sheng Chen of Taipei and Saaduddin Klsloo of Bangladesh: Group H - Arif Khan of Pakistan. Sujay Ghorpade of India and Ibrahim Alidkhot of Iran.
WOMEN : Group A - An Hi-Suk of DPRK. Shizuka Matsuzaki of Japan, and Park Kyung Ac of South Korea: Group B - Lin Li Zhu of Taipei. Zhang Qin of China and Zulckha Akhlcr of Bangladesh: Group C- Tomoko Shimonaga
of Japan. IJ Jong-Suk of DPRK and Suvaporn PraphuUku! of Thailand: Group D- Fan Zianxin of China. Park I lac Jung of South Korea and Niuyotl Shah nec Roy of India.
The quarter-finals, semifinals and finals will be decided ■by best of five games while the qualifying rounds will lx- decided in'best of three games.
The winners and the runners up of the eight men's groups will play to determine the first sixteen places while the winners and runners-up of the four women's groups will play to decide the first eight places on knockout system in play-ofT matches.
The men's Competition will be initially played on a robin league basis with the winners and runner-up'of the eight threc-mcn clusters going through to the knockout stage to determine the quarterfinalists.. Hie twelve women have been split into four equal clusters with the top two In each group qualifying for the quarter-finals.
BKSP. the only national institute of sports in the country. has been lavishly decorated with flags, posters and festoons for the occasion. A multi-purpose non-skid mat has been laid al the 3,000 capacity Indoor gym last month to facilitate the holding of such an important International meet.
Pepsi Cola are sponsoring the four-day tournament which is scheduled to conclude on March 9. Controlled by the Asian Table Tennis Union, Bel-Jing, and recognised by the International Tabic Tennis Federation. London, the equipment for the meet Is being provided by the China Shang-hai Cultural and Educational Facilities Company, the makers of ‘Double Happiness" table tennis gear.