The five tennis players excluded from the country’s Asian Games squad did not feature in the long list sent to the IOA by the All India Tennis Association (AITA), a Sports Authority of India (SAI) source said on Tuesday, justifying the omission on the basis of their lower-than-prescribed international rankings. Manas Dhamne (men’s singles), Vaishnavi Adkar (women’s singles), Sahaja Yamalapalli (women’s singles), Vaidehee Chaudhari (women’s doubles) and Prarthana Thombare (women’s doubles) were not included in the seven-member Indian squad as they did not meet the criteria of being inside the top-8 of continental standings.
“Their names were not received by Sports Ministry in the final list shared by the IOA (Indian Olympic Association). But the SAI source countered that by saying, “Exposure trips belong on the ITF and Challenger circuits, not at the Asian Games. The final tennis squad for the Asiad has only one singles player in Sumit Nagal, with Ramkumar Ramanathan, Saketh Myneni, Yuki Bhambri, Rutuja Bhosale, and Ankita Raina making up the doubles teams.
In fact their names were not there in the long list sent by the All India Tennis Association (AITA) to the IOA,” the source told PTI.
