Good Sports: INDIA’S TOP PADDLER JOINS JAPAN’S T-LEAGUE
G. Sathiyan, India’s top table tennis player, recently joined the T-League, the first professional table tennis league in Japan. The league, founded in 2018, has four teams in the men’s division and four in the women’s division.
Sathiyan, ranked No. 31 in the world, six spots below America’s top player, Kanak Jha, had been playing for the German club Grünwettersbach in the Bundesliga for the last few years.
In the T-League, this Chennai native and engineering graduate is competing against some of the world’s top players, including Japan’s Tomokazu Harimoto (No. 5 in the world) and Jun Mizutani (No. 15), and China’s Yun-Ju Lin (No. 6).
“Asian countries dominate the table tennis world and I started receiving a lot of offers ever since I beat Tomokazu Harimoto in the Asian Championship,” Sathiyan told The Times of India. “I feel great to be a part of the league and I’m hopeful this new opportunity will help me take my game to the next level in the coming years.”
Compiled and partly written by Indian humorist MELVIN DURAI, author of the novel Bala Takes the Plunge.
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