MUMBAI, May 2: Former national men's table tennis champion Srinivasan Sriram has been left out of the Maharashtra squad to play team events in the May 31-June 11 National Games to be held in Bangalore and Mysore.

Sriram, who was recently in the news for being omitted from the Indian team for the just-concluded Commonwealth Championship and the ongoing World Championship in England despite being ranked No 4 in the country, has not played any tournament in Mumbai or elsewhere in the State during the last season.

State selection committee chairman Prakash Deshmukh informed that he could not disclose the reason for leaving out the 34-year-old Sriram from the five-member men's team, to be captained by 33-year-old Hindustan Petroleum officer S Ramaswami.

But Deshmukh added that Sriram's omission was not ``necessarily'' due to the player's failure to take part in any tournament in Maharashtra last season.

Sriram's name had been included by the Sports Ministry instead of Table Tennis Federation of India's (TTFI) choice S Raman (Tamil Nadu) for the Commonwealth and World Championship while clearing the team.

The Sports Ministry's decision created a furore in the TTFI ranks leading to it issuing a threat to pull out the entire squad from the two tournaments unless the team cleared by the Ministry included Federation's choice Raman in place of Sriram.

The squad finally left for Britain with Raman, instead of Sriram, as one of its members after the Ministry bowed to TTFI's demand.

Sriram, however, finds a place in the individual events having finished a losing semi-finalist in the last Nationals held at Thane.

TEAM

Team events: men: S Ramaswami (capt.), B S Thakur, Sunil Babras, Rajesh Shelar and Sanjeev Mehra.

Women: Sujata Babras (capt), Chaitali Hate, Mallika Parekh and Sharmila Kelkar. Manager: P D Deshmukh. Coach: Surendra Deshpande.

Individual events: S Sriram (men's singles), Sujata Babras (women's singles), Mahendra Chiplunkar and Sanjay Nemlekar (men's doubles), Chiplunkar and Shilpa Takalkar (mixed doubles).

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.