It must seem like a dream. On March 15, 2020, India's Sharath Kamal Achanta (pictured) won the Oman Open in Muscat. It was the first International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF) World Tour title in ten years for the then-37-year-old, owner of a record nine Indian men's singles championships. Achanta's renaissance was abruptly halted, however, when the entire world shut down due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, nearly a year later, Achanta is back on the Arabian Peninsula like nothing ever happened. 460 miles west-northwest in Doha, Qatar, Achanta is ensconced in the World Table Tennis (WTT) Middle East Hub, the official resumption of ITTF activities. The first event in the Hub, the WTT Contender, sees the world #32 Achanta comfortably occupying the 12th of 24 seeded berths. His compatriot and doubles partner Sathiyan Gnanasekaran, who last week bested Achanta for his first Indian men's singles championship, is seeded 17th. Starting today, 91 men and 76 women begin battling for the eight spots allotted to qualifiers in their respective draws. Single-elimination brackets will whittle the fields down to eight, whereupon they will be sprinkled at random into the main draw. On Wednesday, Achanta, Gnanasekaran and the rest of the seeded players commence play. For the veteran Sharath Kamal Achanta, it must be surreal to be back in the Arabian Peninsula, vying for another ITTF title as if nothing unusual has happened in the last year. Were he to defy the long odds and win again, it would turn his dream-like state into a dream come true.

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