Date:24/04/2007 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2007/04/24/stories/2007042401331900.htm

Sport

World Junior Cup: India seeded second

Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI: The frail Indian girls will have the task of living up to their status of being the second seeds in the World Junior Cup Asia-Oceania under-14 tennis championship that begins at the DLTA Complex here on Tuesday.

India finds itself ahead of China, Japan, Chinese Taipei, Australia and Korea among others and only behind Indonesia, which showed its champion status in the two individual tournaments played with a similar field recently at Jakarta.

India in Pool `D'

Nova Patel, Aishwarya Agrawal and Rishika Sunkara make the Indian team which finds itself in pool `D' along with New Zealand, Kazakhstan and Korea.

The first task for the host would be to make the quarterfinals, a job accomplished by the Indian boys in a strong field last week. The top two teams from each of the four groups will make the knock-out stage. As in the case of the boys event played at the same venue, the top four teams from the zone will qualify for the World Group finals to be staged in July.

While the Indonesian girls, Grace Sari Ysidora and Cynthia Melita Setwaran had won the two singles titles in that order to emphasise Indonesia's supremacy in the development series, Aishwarya Agrawal had shown her ability by making successive semifinals.

Nova Patel is returning after recovering from ill-health and Rishika Sunkara can be a surprise package.

It remains to be seen how well the players from the 16 countries handle the heat and dust of the Capital in their bid to carry their teams forward.

The groupings:

Pool A: Indonesia, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Uzbekistan; Pool B: Thailand, Chinese Taipei, Sri Lanka, Japan; Pool C: Australia, Philippines, Singapore, China; Pool D: India, New Zealand, Kazakhstan and Korea.