Abhay Singh and Amina Orfi of Egypt will be the top seeds in the men’s and women’s sections of the HCL PSA Challenger squash tournament to be staged at the Dhyan Chand National Stadium from Saturday.
Interestingly, Abhay and Amina were the champions of the last Challenger held in Jodhpur in November.
While Abhay has been stepping it up to climb the world rank, the 15-year-old Amina Orfi, the world No.1 junior is a bright talent set to dazzle the squash world.
The secretary general of the Squash Rackets Federation of India (SRFI), Cyrus Poncha, was delighted that squash had a new world-class venue in the heart of Delhi, the first such facility for the game set up by the Sports Authority of India (SAI).
“It is a good event for a lot of our players. The new venue has six courts. It is great to have an international event at this venue that has been nicely set up by the SAI and the Ministry of Sports”, said Cyrus, who has been associated with Indian squash for a long time as a coach.
Cyrus also pointed out that having such talented players like Amina Orfi would help the Indian players sharpen their game.
“With the PSA, we will have the India Open junior event held concurrently, and that will be followed by the Asian team championship in Chennai. It will be good for the Indian players to prepare through the event in Delhi”, observed Cyrus.
Yassin Elshafei, Sandeep Ramachandran, Toufik Mekhalfi, Ravindu Laksiri, Tomotaka Endo, Matthew Lal and Yousif Thani will be some of the other leading players in the men’s event of the PSA tournament.
Nadeeen Kotb, Nour Ramy, Jelena Dutina, Salma El Alfy, Menna Walid, Tanvi Khanna and Malak Fathy will be other leading players in the women’s field, trying to deny the title to Amina Orfi.
While top seed Abhay Singh will open the proceedings at 12 noon on Saturday with a match against Guhan Senthilkumar, the eight seeded players in the women’s event will have a bye in the first round.
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