Carrom contest for Team India selection

4 boys, 4 girls will be chosen to represent India

Devanshi Joshi. Vadodara/DNA
Saturday, September 13, 2008

A national carrom tournament will be held at the citys Urmi school on September 13 and 14 to select players for the Indian carrom contingent for 12th South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) carrom championship and 3rd International Carrom Federation (ICF) cup, 2008 to be held at Colombo, Sri Lanka. Eight players, including four girls and four boys, will be chosen to represent India.National and world champions from across the country will participate in the final round of selection for the team that will play the two international level tournaments in October. The final team will be declared on September 14. Along with national champions, world carrom champions Yogesh Pardesi from Maharashtra, I Ilavazhakhi, M Nataraj, and Radhakrishnan from Tamil Nadu, Rashmi Kumari from Bihar and national champion P Nirmala from Hyderabad and other leading players will participate in the selection rounds.Currently, Maria Irudium of Chennai is considered to be the best carrom player, and the Indian government has even honoured him with Arjun Award. Yogesh Pardesi of petroleum sports board of Maharashtra and I Ilavazhakhi of Tamil Nadu are world cup winners and incidentally, they are also reigning national champions. P Nirmala of LIC from Hyderabad is a six-time national champion and Sandip Deorukhkar of Mumbai is the current Asian champion.