Organising Committee chairman P T Ummer Koya, while addressing newspersons, said he expected good returns for the hosts from this championship. ``There are about 20 Indian entries for this championship. So there is a reasonable chance for India to win a medal here,'' he said.

The World junior championship is coming back to Kozhikode for the second time after a gap of five years. The attraction of the world junior is that the winner directly turns a Grandmaster or Woman's Grandmaster. The winners in the boys and girls events will be awarded trophies by the sponsors, National Thermal Power Corporation Trophy and the Triveni Trophy respectively. The top 10 will also be given cash awards.

Among the stars who have confirmed participation for the two-week mega event are Ruslan Ponnomariev, the 15-year-oldGrandmaster from Ukraine, who has a rating of 2,585, GM Mihail Kobalia of Russia (2,505), Alexander Galkin of Russia (2,540) and Dao Thien Hai of Vietnam (2,580).

In the girls championship Poland has a strong representation in Joanna Dwarakowska (Elo 2,390), Monika Bobrowska (2,470) and Weta Radciewicz (2,425). Corina Peptan of Romania (2,430) and Lakos Nikoletta of Hungary (2,385) are the other contenders.

The chief arbiter of the championship will be Casto Abundo of the Philippines, who is now based in Switzerland.

The Indian team is: Boys: K Sasikiran, R Karthik, Tejas Bakre, Arjun Uberoi, Neelotpal Das, Sandipan Chanda, MR Venkatesh, Gillford Thangkhiew, RR Laxman, Mahesh Chandran, Sounderrajan Kidambi, Vikramaditya Kamble, Saurabh Kherdekar, S Satyapragyan, Praveen Menon. Girls: Vijayalakshmi S, Pallavi Shah, Swati Ghate, Meenakshi S, Koneru Humpy (girls).