Sharath-led team leaves for World Championships

A 10-member team, comprising five men and five women, will represent India in the World Championships to be held in Kuala Lumpur between February 28 and March 6.

Sharath Kamal skipped the South Asian Games in Shillong.

A 10-member team, comprising five men and five women, will represent India in the World Championships to be held in Kuala Lumpur between February 28 and March 6.

The team members — Sharath Kamal, Anthony Amalraj, Soumyajit Ghosh, Harmeet Desai and G. Sathiyan in the men’s section and Manika Batra, Mouma Das, K. Shamini, Pooja Sahasrabuddhe and Madhurika Patkar in the women’s category — left on Thursday for the Malaysian capital. The team is accompanied by two coaches, Bhavani Mukherjee and Arup Das.

The world event is only for team competition and in the previous edition at Tokyo (Japan), the Indian men’s team had finished 33rd while the women’s squad captured the 29th position.

The team members arrived here this morning from Patiala after a 15-day national camp at the National Institute of Sports (NIS). The members had been training together at Patiala for more than a month and in between participated in the South Asian Games at Shillong.

Sharath, who skipped the Shillong event, had been training all by himself in Germany before joining the campers at Patiala for a brief period before the team’s departure to Kuala Lumpur. Sharath, who was fit and in shape having come out of an injury spell, sounded optimistic of a good showing at the worlds.

“I am feeling fine and having a nice rhythm going. Our aim at the worlds would be to reach the Champions Division and look ahead from there,” he said.