Table Tennis coach's arrival stuck in red tape

MUMBAI: It's the same old story again. Newly-appointed senior national table tennis coach Massimo Constantini was supposed to land in India by Tuesday, but as usual, the powers-that-be delayed processing the Italian's agreement papers.
In fact, Table Tennis Federation of India (TTFI) secretary general M C Chowhan told TOI that "the government dispatched the papers only on Tuesday!"
"We were following the matter up with the government, but they kept delaying it.Today they finally cleared his papers," said Chowhan.
The TTFI wanted 50-year-old Constantini to report by January 20 as the camp for the Commonwealth Games probables (18 boys and 16 girls) was to begin in Patiala two days later.
Now the camp has been deferred to February 1 and the TTFI is hopeful that the Italian would be around by then.
"There was no point in conducting the camp without a coach. Also, most of the top players would be busy with the inter-petroleum tournament in Guwahati (Jan 28-Feb 1), so we decided to postpone the camp," added Chowhan.
Interestingly, the players haven't been officially informed of the new dates for the camp to be held from Feb 1-9. The men will be training in Patiala while the women will be camped in Ajmer before the team flies out for the Kuwait and Qatar Open Pro Tours.
Constantini would be replacing Belarussian Aleksey Yefremov, who quit last month.