The Table Tennis Federation of India (TTFI) has named an unchanged squad from the successful Commonwealth Games campaign to represent India at the ITTF World Table Tennis Championships in Halmstad, Sweden.

The men’s team will include veteran Sharath Kamal, G. Sathiyan, Anthony Amalraj, Harmeet Desai and Sanil Shetty, while the women’s team will include Manika Batra, Mouma Das, Madhurika Patkar, Pooja Sahasrabuddhe and Suthirtha Mukherjee; the same combination that produced eight medals in Indian Table Tennis’ most successful CWG campaign.

Now laden with additional pressure to perform post their new-found reputation, Sharath Kamal exercised caution while saying, “We know that the expectations have soared after our CWG success. But the World Championships are a different ball game. Yet, we will give our best and I would be happy if we reached a top-12 spot,” he said. “Anything else, we will consider as a bonus,” he added.

The women’s champion Manika was slightly more optimistic about the women’s team’s chances. “I am in good touch and our team-spirit is really good after what we did at Gold Coast. But the CWG is the past, and we have to live in the present. The world championships will give us a kind of experience that will help us all in the future,” she quipped.

While the team has their sights set on glory, team coach Massimo Costantini has an additional target set for his team, that being the challenge of maintaining and improving India’s rankings. He said, “Most importantly, they have to maintain their rankings. The top fields will be on view in Sweden and the players are aware of the job at hand.”

The World Table Tennis Championships take place from 29 April to 6 May 2018 and will be streamed LIVE on https://tv.ittf.com.