The Hindu : Sport : All eyes on Ankita

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Mar 20, 2006

Sport

Sport

All eyes on Ankita

Kamesh Srinivasan

NEW DELHI: Ankita Bhambri will be in focus in the $10,000 ITF women's tennis tournament to be played at the DLTA Complex here from Monday.

The 19-year-old top seed is the third best Indian on the WTA rankings behind Sania Mirza and Shikha Uberoi, but the Delhi lass may still have to prove her form and fitness in the current tournament for selection in the Indian team for the Fed Cup to be held in Korea next month.

Short of match practice

After having retired in the second round of a similar tournament in Muzaffarnagar a few weeks back owing to a painful elbow, Ankita has played only one singles match, at the WTA Tour event in Bangalore.

Ankita may have a tough start when she takes on qualifier Liza Pereira in the first round. The other two leading contenders for Fed Cup berths, Rushmi Chakravarthi and Isha Lakhani are bravely competing in the Australian circuit in bigger tournaments.

Competitive field

It will be interesting to keep track of the fortunes of some of the other Indian girls like Punam Reddy and Sanaa Bhambri in a competitive field that has players from more than a dozen countries.

The Indian girls had a taste of the tough challenge in the qualifying event, as that itself featured players from 10 countries. Madura Ranganathan and Parija Maloo were the other Indian girls apart from Liza to make the main draw from the qualifying event.

The seeds:

1. Ankita Bhambri, 2. Claire Peterzan (GBR), 3. Tomoyo Takagishi (Jpn), 4. Sanaa Bhambri, 5. Nudnida Luangnam (Tha), 6. Thassha Vitayaviroj (Tha), 7. Punam Reddy and 8. Sai Jayalakshmy.

Wildcards: Vishika Chhetri, Asha Nandakumar, Sweta Kumari Solanki and Eleonora Sidjemileva (Uzb).

The results (qualifying event second and final round): Nungnadda Wannasuk (Tha) bt Ji-Sun Ha (Kor) 4-6, 6-0, 6-2; Ji-Young Kim (Kor) bt Rachael Hall (GBR) 6-1, 6-4; Sandy Gumulya (Ina) bt Jeong-A Cho (Kor) 6-3, 6-2; Liza Pereira bt Sheethal Goutham 6-4, 1-6, 6-2; Madura Ranganathan bt Renuka Keshwani 6-0, 6-0; Wei-Ping Lee (Sin) bt Tarrin Dougery (US) 6-4, 6-0; Varanya Vijuksanaboon (Tha) bt Chirashanthi Rajur 6-1, 6-1; Parija Maloo bt Penporn Chantawannop (Tha) 6-3, 6-4.

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