The Hindu : Sport / Squash : Top players for Chennai event

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Thursday, Jun 26, 2008
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Top players for Chennai event

Special Correspondent

CHENNAI: A PSA men’s event and a WISPA women’s squash tournament are to be conducted simultaneously under a common banner — the ICL Chennai Open 2008 — from July 2 to 6 at the ICL academy here.

The programme will be conducted by the Tamil Nadu Squash Rackets Association under the auspices of the Squash Rackets Federation of India. Both are $8,000 events and will feature the best of Indian talents alongside overseas players.

The Indian domination, at least in the draw, is prominent with national champion Saurav Ghosal as the highest ranked player (53) given the top billing and Ritwik Bhattacharya (ranked 58) as the second seed. Mr. N. Ramachandran, Secretary-General SRFI, said he was delighted that two Indians were the top seeds in the PSA tournament.

The 16-player draw has entrants from Australia, Egypt, Hong Kong, Pakistan, Wales and England. The other Indians in the fray are Siddarth Suchde, Gaurav Nandrajog and Naresh Kumar (wild card). Four slots are to be filled up after the qualifying phase to be gone through on July 2. Main draw competitions in both men’s and women’s section begin on July 3.

As an effort to provide tournament exposure to the Indian squad getting ready for the World junior boys’ championship to be held in Zurich during July-end, the team members Vikram Malhotra, Paramit Singh, Ravi Dixit, Karan Malik, Ramit Tandon and Aditya Jagtap have been placed in the qualifying draw.

The women’s event has Christina Mak of Hong Kong (ranked 33) as the top seed with India’s national champion Joshna Chinappa (ranked 36) as second seed.

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