Date:26/04/2003 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2003/04/26/stories/2003042605901900.htm

Sport - Tennis

Wild card for Vijay Kannan

NEW DELHI APRIL 25. Vijay Kannan's heroics as a lucky-loser, when he beat the sixth-seeded Bjorn Rehnquist of Sweden in Bangalore earlier this week, fetched him a wild card for the Servo $25,000 Challenger tennis tournament to be played at the DLTA Complex here from April 28 to May 3.

The other three wild cards were given to Rohan Bopanna, Harsh Mankad and Prakash Amritraj. There was a possibility of Sunil Kumar getting one of the wild cards, but he pulled out of the event with a shoulder injury.

In a press conference held here on Friday, the secretary general of the All India Tennis Association (AITA), Mr. Anil Khanna, stated that the two Challengers were being hosted with the assistance of Indian Oil, in a bid to help the Indian players make it to the next level.

It was also mentioned that the overwhelming entries of quality foreign participation with John Van Lottum of the Netherlands as the No.1 player with a ranking of 105, meant that India was a popular destination.

The AITA secretary was quite pleased with the performance of the Indian players in the tournament in Bangalore, especially the fine run of Harsh Mankad.

As expected the doubles wild cards were given to, Rohan Bopanna and Prakash Amritraj; Harsh Mankad and Vishaal Uppal apart from Vijay Kannan and Ajay Ramaswamy.

The qualifying wild cards were given to Somdev Dev Varman and Karan Rastogi and the duo was given a doubles wild card as well, in keeping with AITA's idea of blooding the talented youngsters in to the big league. A few more wild cards for the qualifying event were to be decided later.

The qualifying event will be held on Saturday and Sunday. There will be two rounds on the first day, which may mean an early start for the day's programme.

Carlos Sanches of Portugal will be the ATP supervisor, while Astha Attygala of Sri Lanka, Ali Katebi and Ali Nili of Iran will work as umpires along with Nitin Kannamwar.