The Hindu : Sport / Badminton : Junior ranking event from tomorrow

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Jun 25, 2004

Sport

Sport - Badminton

Junior ranking event from tomorrow

By Our Special Correspondent

BANGALORE, JUNE 24. A clutch of top junior players led by Anand Pawar and Saina Nehwal, will be seen in action in the Union Bank's All-India junior ranking badminton championship which gets underway at the KBA Stadium on Saturday, with a huge schedule of qualifying round matches. The championship which carries an overall prize money of Rs. one lakh is being conducted by Padukone Sportrs Management, under the auspices of the BAI and KBA.

This year's tournament comes at the right time, when there are no exams or any other major event clashing with the dates and the fact that the popular Krishna Khaitan Memorial tournament is being held in Chennai in the first week of July, has ensured a record participation, with organisers having received 1,250 entries from 650 players. By the time, the tournament winds up on June 30, over a 1,000 matches would have been played in the championship.

The championship would help the Indian junior players, who are bound for ABC Junior championship to be held in China later in July, to test their skills. Anand Pawar, who heads pack in the under-19 boys' section, will be challenged by host of other talented youngsters like P. Kashyap, Jishnu Sanyal and Anshuman Hazarika. Anand underwent a two-month training in Indonesia recently.

On the distaff side in the under-19 section, Saina Nehwal has a good fight on cards from worthy contenders like Aditi Mutatkar, Aparna Balan and Sayali Gokhale.

A total 16 events will be played in the championship, ranging from under-10 singles and doubles to under-19 singles and doubles.

While expressing his happiness over the record turn out, Prakash Padukone, stressed the need to frame a proper schedule for the juniors. "If we have couple of tournaments in the same region around the same time, it will be easy for the youngsters and I am pleased to note that BAI has been attempting to do that", said Padukone.

Mr. Vijendra of the Union Bank, on behalf of the sponsor, said that his bank was committed to promoting sports at all levels and that it would strive to make the event bigger and better in future.

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