The Patterson Memorial Inter-School TT Championship got underway today at the Kshudiram Anushilan Kendra with aplomb as organisers Bengal Table Tennis Association (BTTA) are celebrating the this year’s event as the Platinum Jubilee edition.

As the event started off, close to 350 young players hailing from schools from the state’s far-flung areas converged to vie for the honours at the event that is now seeing its 59th edition unfold. The finals of the four-day event are slated for November 12.

The boys have been categorised into 16 groups while there are four pools for the girls. The group league matches will be played out first, and they will then be followed by the for interesting individual contests.

Last year’s edition of the Patterson Memorial TT meet saw Purulia emerging as the champion district in the group matches. Chittaranjan High School was the overall winner and Manbhum Victoria Institution ended runners up. This time round, as BTTA general-secretary Subrata Dey reckons, the contests will be even more fierce as some extremely talented young guns will take each other on.

Dey pointed out the names of a few proven and budding champs like Sayan Bose, Biman Patra, Prithiraj Roy and Tirthanath Daripa. Cadet champion and Sub-junior runner-up Sayan, who is a standard VIII student of South Point, has been taking part in this annual tournament for three years now. And the youngster credits his coach and TT administration stalwart Rabi Chatterjee for inspiring and guiding him.