April 2: Indian sports news wrap of the day

Here is the action from Indian sports on Saturday.

Asia-Oceania Junior Billie Jean King Cup tennis event to be staged at the DLTA Complex from Monday.

Here are all the Indian sporting news of the day:

Tennis-

Some of the best juniors will be in action in the Asia-Oceania Junior Billie Jean King Cup tennis event to be staged at the DLTA Complex from Monday.

Fifteen teams from Australia to Vietnam will be fighting for three spots for the World Group stage in the under-16 girls event.

The teams have already been practising at the venue for the last few days. Quite thoughtfully, the opening ceremony has been kept for Sunday, so that the teams can focus on their matches from Monday.

Captain of the Indian team, Archana Venkataraman was happy with the preparation of the players, Shruti Ahlawat, Niyati Kukreti and Riya Sachdeva.

It has been about six hours of training in two sessions, and the players have acclimatised to the hot conditions.

The Indian team took the evening off on Saturday, and will have two sessions of training on Sunday.

The opening ceremony has been scheduled at 11 a.m., and it will be followed by the captains meeting at noon, to decide the seedings etc.

After the league stage, the top two teams each from four groups will qualify for the knock-out stage.

 

Australia, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Iran, Japan, Kazakhstan, Korea, Malaysia, Mongolia, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Uzbekistan and Vietnam will be the teams apart from host India. The notable countries that have skipped the event are China, Chinese Taipei and New Zealand.

The DLTA will be the hub of Asian tennis over the next four weeks, with the Junior Davis Cup boys event scheduled for the second week of the month. It will be followed by the girls and boys events of the under-14 section over the subsequent fortnight.

-by Kamesh Srinivasan

Tennis-

Ankita Raina, seeded No.1 with Arina Rodionova of Australia, won the doubles title in the $60,000 ITF women’s tennis tournament in Australia, with a 4-6, 6-2, 11-9 victory over Fernanda Conreras Gomez and Alana Parnaby, on Saturday.

Ankita and Arina led 9-6 in the super tie-break before converting the fourth match point.

It was the second doubles title of the season for the 29-year-old Ankita and her 33rd career title in the professional circuit including 11 in singles.

- by Kamesh Srinivasan