Chennai girl Dipika to get arjuna award

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On a day when she narrowly missed a spot in the final of the Australian Open, Dipika had something else to cheer about.

The 20-year-old’s name was selected by the Arjuna Award committee chaired by Olympian Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore.

The sports ministry is expected to ratify the selection, which is just a matter of formality, in a couple of days.

For Dipika, the first Indian to make it to the top-15 in squash rankings, sending her nomination for the country’s highest sports honour itself turned out to be a tedious process.

She had to go through the Sports Development Authority of Tamil Nadu, but the recommendation was sent to the ministry only after the deadline lapsed (April 30).

However, SDAT member secretary M. Vijaykumar sent a letter to the Union sports secretary on May 31, explaining that the delay was due to 'administrative reasons and not on part of the applicant'.

Meanwhile, the sports ministry extended the deadline for sending nominations to July 20 to accommodate nominations from federations that missed the initial cut off and it came as a big relief for Dipika.

Dipika will become the eighth squash player to be conferred with a Arjuna Award after K.S. Jain (1961), Anil Nayar (1969), Rajkumar Manchanda (1979), Bhuvneshwari Kumari (1982), M.R. Dharuvala (1990), Mishra Grewal (1997) and Saurav Ghosal (2006).

Dipika goes down fighting in semis

Dipika Pallikal was inconsolable after her semi-final match at the Australian Open squash in Canberra on Saturday.

The Chennai girl let a golden opportunity slip through her fingers as she was just two points away from entering the final of a major squash tournament.

Dipika was leading 9-5 in the fifth and final game before the nerves of playing the big occasion got the better of her.
Dipika lost six points in a row and eventually went down 7-11, 11-7, 11-13, 11-3, 9-11 to world no.4 Laura Massaro of England.

In a match that lasted for 72 minutes, even her experienced opponent conceded that Dipika should have won. “Down 5-9 in the final game, I thought I had lost it, so I just wanted to finish well and make the score respectable.''

''Dipika probably thought she had won it. I have been there myself — you have got such a big lead and you think ‘I will win one more point surely’,” Laura said.

It was Laura who started the match strongly, but she struggled to cope with Dipika’s deceptiveness at the front of the court.

Dipika was unlucky to lose the third in a tiebreak then dominated until the late stages of the fifth.

Dipika played brilliantly to take the fourth game 11-3 and opened a big lead in the fifth before developing cold feet.

Laura will meet defending champion and world no.1 Nicol David of Malaysia in the final.

The two have met 17 times before, with the Malaysian winning 15 of them.