The Hindu : Sport / Tennis : Manisha in Fed Cup team

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Apr 18, 2004

Sport

Sport - Tennis

Manisha in Fed Cup team

NEW DELHI, APRIL 17. Manisha Malhotra has been drafted into the Indian Fed Cup team for the Asia-Oceania group I tennis tournament to be played on a league-cum-knock-out format at the DLTA Complex here from April 19.

The 27-year-old Manisha has been coaching the Wimbledon mixed doubles finalist, Russian Anastassia Rodionova, in the last few months. Her foray into professional coaching has seen her own singles ranking slip to 738. However, the latest ITF ruling, that the US-based Shikha Uberoi can represent India only after August 19, following a recent application by the girl, forced the captain Enrico Piperno to pick Manisha to strengthen the team, especially in handling the crucial doubles rubber.

"I thought that the experience of Manisha would be useful in doubles, after Anil Khanna called from Stockholm to say that Shikha Uberoi would have to wait before representing India. Ours is a depleted team, as Isha Lakhani and Megha Vakharia are not available because of injuries. The rest of the players have been training hard, and we will try our best," said captain Enrico Piperno.

The secretary general of the All India Tennis Association (AITA), Mr. Anil Khanna had tried to take up the case of Shikha in the ITF meeting but the international body stuck to the rule of allowing a player to represent another country only after six months of the date of application.

Rushmi Chakravarthi, Sania Mirza and Ankita Bhambri are the other members of the team, who have been training with Shikha, in the Capital over the last few days. Manisha is scheduled to join the team on Sunday afternoon, after the draw is made by the President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam at the Rashtrapati Bhavan in the morning.

"I haven't been playing that much of late, but have been practising regularly. Rodionova has taken a break, and hence I am free. Will start again with the French Open. I have been playing Fed Cup quite a bit since first representing the country in Mumbai about 10 years ago. I am looking forward to playing again," said Manisha from Mumbai.

The 54th-ranked Tamarine Tanasugarn of Thailand and the 122nd-ranked Angelique Widjaja of Indonesia, who incidentally is ranked No. 16 in doubles, will be some of the other leading players in the region, trying to take their country into the World Group play-off.

China, Chinese Taipei, Indonesia, Korea, New Zealand, Philippines, Thailand and Uzbekistan are the other teams in the fray in group I.

India had returned to group I last year, after having been relegated to group II the previous year.

At the venue, efforts were on to fine-tune the floodlights to facilitate play in the evening. The floodlights had been brought down from their original higher position in the poles, and new poles had been erected to provide more light at the middle of the courts.

The referee Hiro Yahata of Japan was scheduled to study the lights further before making a final decision to start the matches at 4 p.m. everyday.

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