The Hindu : Sport / Badminton : Indian juniors confident

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Oct 16, 2004

Sport

Sport - Badminton

Indian juniors confident

By Our Special Correspondent

BANGALORE, OCT. 15. The Vancouver bound Indian junior badminton squad for the World junior championship exuded confidence on the eve of its departure from here. The squad, comprising four boys and four girls, includes the Anand Pawar, P. Kashyap, Jishnu Sanyal and Sagar Chopra (boys), Saina Nehwal, Aparna Balan, Vaidehi and Syali Gokhale (girls). Syali Gokhlae has, in fact, come in as a replacement to an injured Aditi Mutatkar. The championship begins at Vancouver on Oct. 21

The chief coach of the team, Sanjiv Sachdev, who spoke to The Hindu, said: "Our aim is to improve the current junior World standing of the team, which is pegged No.9. "The team has lot a of potential and they have trained hard. We had enlisted the support of Indonesian doubles coach, Hadi Sugiyanto who is based here, to help us with the doubles combinations. Basically, the team event is being played on the Sudirman Cup format with two singles and three doubles (boys, girls and mixed)."

In the preliminary phase, India is grouped with Chinese Taipei, which is finished fourth overall last time and Netherlands.

Sanjiv Sachdev also expected some good performance from the Wimbledon champion, Anand Pawar and Saina Nehwal in the open events. "They have performing well in the senior ranks. Pawar's win at Wimbledonw was creditable and Saina, is undoubtedly the most promising junior talent we have on the distaff side. She did well to reach the quarterfinals of the German Open and Asian Satellite in Singapore".

In the last World championship in South Africa, Rohan Castelino reached the quarterfinals, but the best Indian performance to date, was that Aparna Popat, who was the girls' singles runner-up in 1996.