Another selection row brewing
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The selection controversy haunting Indian tennis just refuses to die down. The All India Tennis Association gave an impression that the mess has been cleaned up after kicking Olympic rebels Rohan Bopanna and Mahesh Bhupathi out of the forthcoming Davis Cup tie against New Zealand, but the selection fiasco seems far from over.
Non-playing captain S.P. Misra and the Aita’s selectors, with Anil Dhupar of Madhya Pradesh as chairman of the committee, will be under the scanner when they prune the six-member squad to four at the trials to be held at the Chandigarh Lawn Tennis Association on September 6. The Asia-Oceania relegation play-off begins at the same venue on September 14.
Out of six players — Yuki Bhambri, Vishnu Vardhan, Saketh Myneni, N. Sriram Balaji, Sanam Singh and Divij Sharan — the first two pick themselves given their experience over the rest. The headache, however, is the selection of the remaining two.
According to a reliable source, there is a raging debate in the Aita think tank over deciding the final four. While one camp insists on the inclusion of Delhi’s Sharan as a doubles specialist, the other wants to go with four singles players who can play doubles.
After Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi pulled out of the World Group tie against champions Serbia citing injuries last year, Somdev Devvarman put in a spirited performance by playing singles as well as doubles though India lost 1-4. “So picking last two members from Sriram, Saketh and Sanam, who play singles as well as doubles, makes sense.
Having four singles players will give the team an additional flexibility if one of the top players is injured,” a bigwig in the federation said.
Vizag youngster Saketh has been on a roll winning back-to-back ITF Futures titles including a double in Chennai, while Sanam, who won an Asian Games doubles gold medal with Devvarman in 2010, upset world no.71 Juan Sebastian Cabal of Columbia in a qualifier at the Winston-Salem Open in the US.
Tamil Nadu’s Sriram made it to the semi-finals of the $35,000 Challenger event in Uzbekistan and has the highest singles (378) and doubles (352) rankings among the trio.
The source even went on to question the chairman of selection committee’s awareness about the young players.
“Dhupar has never seen the likes of Saketh,Vishnu and Sriram in action during a quality competition. He must have a unique sixth sense to select players without seeing them play,” he said.
“Earlier this year, when Dhupar travelled to Uzbekistan for the Davis Cup match, he spent two days in Tashkent at the federation’s expense when the team was playing in another city, Namangam.
Surprisingly, he returned to India after watching just two matches and did not bother to stay back and look after Sanam Singh who was down with chicken pox,” added the source.
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