The Hindu : Sport : Impressive show by Sandhya

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Aug 13, 2005

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Sport - Sports : General

Impressive show by Sandhya

Special Correspondent

BANGALORE: An outstanding performance by Sandhya Nagaraj marked a successful tour of Spain by the wards of KSLTA's High Performance Tennis Centre.

In the 10-week-tour (May through July), partly sponsored by Air-India, the HTPC wards stayed and trained in Barcelona, besides playing in the Spanish Monty Tour and couple of other European events. They made 10 finals and Sandhya, who joined the team after playing in the junior French Open, went on to win three Monty titles, besides making the doubles final in the ITF women's event in Barcelona. She also made the last-16 round in the singles.

Other players, who took runner-up spots on the Monty Tour events were Akash Wagh, Kesika Jayapalan, Prarthana Pratap, Sanjith Raju and Vinay Kamineni.

Sandhya said she was elated at her success on the Tour. "It was a good experience and by far it was the longest overseas stint that I had done. My confidence level has gone up and playing in Spain has helped me adapt well to clay courts," said the youngster.

Jonathan Stubbs, the English coach of HPTC who also accompanied his wards, said, "It was a heartening performance. I was impressed with Sandhya and Varsha Shivashankar, who in my opinion, have the potential to emulate Sania Mirza."

Stubbs, however, pointed out that it would be a long and hard road ahead. "To reach a WTA or ATP level takes thousands of matches and countless hours of practice and lot more tournaments. I don't set a time frame for my wards, but they are surely going up."

In the coming weeks, HPTC wards are embarking on various tours. Sandhya Nagaraj and Varsha Shivashankar are going back to Europe by the end of the month to play a few ITF women's Tour events in Spain, Portugal and Italy.

HPTC wards will play the Nationals at Chennai from August 22. In September, they will play in the ITF junior World ranking tournaments in India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. They will also compete in the ITF men's Satellite at Delhi in October.

St. Aloysius HSS and Canara HS shine

MANGALORE: St. Aloysius High Schools at Urva and Kodialbail and Canara High School, Urva, earned top honours in the boys' section at the district-level swimming competitions here on Friday.

St. Agnes and St. Anns stile the limelight in the girls' section.

A total of 32 events were held and Uday Nayak, Nidhish Shetty and Tushanth Bengre each earned three golds in the boys' under-14 category, while Ashwin Kollaje won three golds in the in under 17 category.

In the under 17 girls Sithara, Chaitrashree and Ashwini Bhat bagged three golds each.

IOB, SAI in title clash

BANGALORE: Indian Overseas Bank set-up a title clash with Sports Authority of India in the D.S Murthy & V. Karunakaran memorial hockey tournament here. In the semifinal league, IOB beat Pioneer Corps Training Centre via golden goal scored in the 71st minute. Muthuselvan scored the match winner after the two teams ended regulation time at 2-2.

PCTC's Munda opened the account in the sixth minute off the third penalty corner. IOB's Gopinath levelled scores off a penalty corner three minutes later. In the second half Sunil Ekka converted a corner and Gopinath scored his second goal for IOB.

In the second match, Sports Authority of India defeated Madras Engineering Group 4-2. Nilesh (7th), Navneeswaran (41st and 64th) and Raghunath (46th) scored for SAI while Bikshal Bhengra (10th) and Samson Fernandes (56th) scored for MEG.

The line-up for Saturday is PCTC vs MEG at 4 p.m. and IOB vs SAI for the title at 6 p.m.

State championship from today

BANGALORE: The defending champion Rohan Castelino is the top seed in the men's singles of the Karnataka Sate championship which gets underway at the KBA Stadium here on Saturday.

Castelino , who made the last 16 in the last senior Nationals, is bound to face some determined challenge from fast improving V.Amar and Utsav Prakash. And Guru Prasad. Mohit Kamath and Abhijith Naimpally, who are making return to competition after some gap are the other contenders. The men's main draw consists of eight direct entries and eight qualifiers and the men's qualifying round will be played on Saturday morning while main draw begins in other events.

The women's singles, with holder Aditi Biswas opting out of the tournament, Varsha Belwadi heads the seedings list, followed by B.N.Ashwini. Monisha Vinakayak and Ruth Misha, who have been dominating the junior girls singles are seeded No.1 and 2 in the under-19 girls section while V,.Amar tops the list in the under-19 boys section.

The tournament which returns to KBA Stadium after a gap of two years , has attracted 1561 entries from Bangalore, Mysore, Udpi, Manipal, Tumkur,Shimoga, Sagar, Hospet, Chitradurga and other district towns.

The State meets heralds a hectic schedule for the KBA, which plans to host the senior National championship, later January 2006, said the KBA President Mr. B.N.Chandrashekar.

Atish wins title

BANGALORE: It was a perfect finale for Atish Das Sharma. The talented youngster won the title in the ICA Open chess championship.

Atish drew with the fourth seed, Prajwal Pramanik, which tied him with M.Raju, with both on 10.5 points each after the final round. But Atish took the title on better progressive score. Prajwal Pramanik (10 points) was placed third.

The results (final round):

Atish Das Sharma (10.5) drew with Prajwal Pramanik (10) ; M.Raju ( 10.5) drew with S. Raghavendra ( 9.5) ; Suvojith Paul ( 9.5) drew with Sushrutha Reddy ( 9.5) ; V.Raghavendra ( 10) bt K.M.Umesh (8); Vishnu Ramnath ( 8.5) lost to Gavi Siddaiah ( 9.5).

St. Joseph's triumphs

BANGALORE: St. Joseph's Indian Middle School bagged the Allan MacBride memorial inter-school hockey tournament for under-12 boys beating St. Germain HS 5-1 in the final on Thursday. Ameen Faizal scored twice and was supported by D.V. Deekshith, Mary Tony and K. Samith. Nannaiah scored for St. Germain.

In the Vivian Pereira memorial for girls, St. Euphrasia's defeated Vidya Shilp Academy 6-0. Josephine slammed three goals, Mohana Kumari scored twice and Malathi rounded off the tally.

Emburey inspects

Chinnaswamy Stadium

Bangalore: Former England captain and off-spinner John Emburey, along with Middlesex County CEO Codrington, made a brief visit to the Chinnaswamy Stadium premises here on Friday. They were here to inspect the training facilities available at the Stadium, the National Cricket Academy and at the KSCA Academy. "It was just a routine visit where they checked the facilities on offer here. Emburey is associated with the Middlesex cricket academy and he was keen to know what we do out here," KSCA Academy director and former India speedster Javagal Srinath said. The duo returned to Mumbai by the evening flight. — Sports Reporter

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