Sport - Sports : General

Preparatory camp ends

NEW DELHI: Seasoned coach Akhtar Ali wound up his five-day preparatory camp for the Asia-Oceania junior tennis championship that starts on Monday, with some tips for Sriram Balaji and Sweta Kumari Solanki, at the DLTA Complex here on Friday.

Balaji, returning to the circuit after being kept away from the game with an ankle injury for nearly six weeks, looked quite sharp and was imbibing the lessons on being quick at the net and resourceful with the returns.

Unfortunately, Balaji reached the Capital only this morning, and could not benefit much from the camp. With Prajnesh Gunneswaran, the national men’s finalist, nursing a sore serving arm and pulling out of the event, the former Davis Cup coach did not have the cream of talent over all to tune up for the event.

“We need to constantly push these youngsters so that they are soon ready for the next level,” said Akhtar.

The qualifying event will start on Saturday. Eight players each in the boys and girls sections were given the wild cards for the main event.

The wild cards: Boys: Rubal Shandilya, Shantanu Rajput, Vedant Kapoor, Kinshuk Sharma, Monal Chhillar, Mandeep Yadav, Duurenbayar Erdenebayar and Kunal Anand. Girls: Ankita Raina, Garima Vatwani, Arantxa Andrady, Bhavana Suresh, Rachita Sarda, Kelsey Sundaram, Disha Sehgal and Sadhana Athreya.

Sunal Jain and Esha Monga have been given pride of place in the men’s and women’s events respectively in the 18th all-India Surjit Kaur memorial open table tennis tournament to be staged at the St. Columba’s School here from October 27 to 31.

The seedings: Men: 1. Sunal Jain, 2. Sameer Sahni, 3. Yakshap Jindal, 4. Harsh Chopra.

Women: 1. Esha Monga, 2. Sanya Sehgal, 3. Manika Batra, 4. Nikita Rautela.

Youth boys: 1. Sunal Jain, 2. Pranshu Gupta, 3. Kartik Kukreja, 4. Yakshap Jindal.

Youth girls: 1. Esha Monga, 2. Manika Batra, 3. Nikita Rautela, 4. Sanya Sehgal.

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