Glitches were too glaring on the opening day of the Asian junior tennis championship, that is serving as the test event for the Commonwealth Games, at the DLTA Complex here on Monday.
While the players went about their task on the court, the parents struggled to enter the arena, carry their belongings or stay with their wards, for lack of accreditation for most. The parents and the players had to enter the arena from completely different gates, located in two different corners of the complex.
After the Haryana chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda inaugurated the tournament in the evening, Kyra Shroff did very well to finish her match against Ravnoor Kaur dropping just a solitary game. The next match on the centre court at the R.K. Khanna Stadium could not be played as scheduled as the floodlights did not come alive, except on one side of the court. Why the lights were not tested a day earlier is anybody's guess.
The “electronic” scoreboards in the main stadium did not function and were obscured behind the giant pillars to be able to provide any information to the sparse gathering.
If that was the situation with the main show court, one could well imagine the conditions on the other courts. The referee had to reschedule the evening programme and cancel many matches owing to bad light.
Perhaps, the organisers took it easy, as only the juniors and their parents were being put to test.
The results (first round): Boys: Saurabh Patil bt Faizan Khuram (Pak) 6-2, 6-2; Srikar Alla bt Manav Kumar Chakma 6-3, 6-2; Rishabdev Raman bt Alok Kumar Tripathi 6-2, 7-5; Digvijay Singh Mehta bt Pradeep Deswal 6-2, 6-2; Wen-Yao Liang (Tpe) bt Abhishek Alla 6-1, 6-1; Rohit Bisht bt Jatinder Singh 6-1, 6-2.
Girls: Nova Patel bt Sowjanya Bavisetti 6-4, 4-6, 6-2; Adnya Naik bt Ratnika Batra 6-3, 6-1; Tanaporn Thongsing (Tha) bt Smriti Joon 6-0, 6-2; Yang Zhaoxuan (Chn) bt Ikttesh Chahal 6-0, 6-0; Bhuvana Kalva bt Sanya Madan 6-1, 6-0; Abhilasha Ahuja bt Rimpledeep Kaur 6-1, 5-7, 6-4; Rishika Sunkara bt Vasundara Raju 6-0, 6-0; Nao Hibino (Jpn) bt NIdhi Chilumula 6-1, 6-0; Ushna Suhail (Pak) bt Namita Bal 6-1, 6-2; Ankita Raina bt Megha Sehrawat 6-3, 6-1; Miho Kowase (Jpn) bt Kanika Vaidya 7-6(5), 6-3; Prarthana Thombare bt Shreya Pasricha 7-5, 6-2; Natalia Khaniejo bt Preethi Ujjini 6-2, 6-1; Napatsakorn Sankaew (Tha) bt Tarannum Handa 6-2, 6-1; Zhu Lin (Chn) bt Zainab Ali Sajjad 6-2, 6-3; Sharmada Balu bt Sanae Ota (Jpn) 6-3, 6-2; Anushka Bhargava bt Rajbir Kaur 6-2, 6-1; K Parminder Kaur 6-0, 6-0; Vaishnavi Reddy bt R. Vijayalakshmi 6-1, 6-0; Sabina Sharipova (Uzb) bt Rehnuma Syedah 6-0, 6-0.
