United Club AITA Tennis Championship Series kicks off June 3

Players from Jamshedpur, Ranchi to vie for top spot at All India Junior National Ranking Championship

Mail News Service

Jamshedpur, May 31: The 1st All India National Ranking Junior Tennis Championship will be held on the clay courts of Beldih Club and United Club between June 1 and 7.

The events for the tournament, named �The United Club AITA Championship Series 2019� will be held in the age group of under 16 for boys and girls in both singles and doubles.

The event is being organized under the banner of �All India Tennis Association (AITA�) and Jharkhand Tennis Association (JTA) from June 1-7. The qualifying rounds have been scheduled for Saturday, June 1 and Sunday, June 2, 2019, while the main draw will start from Monday, June 3.

Debapriyo Das alias Rishi from AITA said, �Jamshedpur last hosted the tournament in December 2018 and within a gap of five months we are back again. Participants from various states like Odisha, Jharkhand, Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Bengal and Tripura will take part in this tournament.�

 The qualifying rounds will have 14 players including ten boys and four girls. Of the 14 players, eight are from Jharkhand comprising four from Jamshedpur and four from Ranchi, informed Vipul Kumar, technical director of the tournament.   

Some of the players from Jharkhand include Sahil Amin (Ranchi) who will be joined by few others from the state like Aditi Pradhan (Ranchi), Swati Verma (Ranchi), Anshul Agarwal (Jamshedpur), Aditya Kumar (Jamshedpur), Pranav Singh (Jamshedpur), Siddharth Verma (Ranchi) and Sharannya Kumar (Jamshedpur). They will be on the courts to prove their mettle at the national ranking tournament.

While addressing a press meet at United Club on Thursday, Rishi further informed that the tournament will provide a platform to play with better players and garner national ranking points.

Avneesh  Gupta, President, United Club and vice president, Shared Services, Tata Steel , said, about 70-80 players will be in Jamshedpur for the next seven days and this being the only national ranking tournament in Jharkhand it will provide a platform to budding players.

�We support football, archery and all other forms of sports and will continue to provide a platform to the budding tennis talents of Jharkhand. We hope to see at least one Indian player in the main draws of top ranked tennis tournaments in the world”. added Gupta.  

The sport made a comeback at Jamshedpur after a gap of almost eight years in 2017 and with the help of Beldih Club and United Club the third such consecutive event is being held in the city.

As per the current AITA Rankings, Arya Bhattacharya of Bengal will be the top seed in Boys Singles Under 16 category. Bhattacharya is ranked at 109, whereas Sahil Amin is at 111, as per the latest rankings.

Matches will be played at both United Club and Beldih Club from 07:00 am on all the days.  The inauguration ceremony of the championship will be held on Monday, 3rd June 2019 at 6:30 am.  The Finals and the Closing Ceremony will be held on Friday, 7th June 2019 at 04:30 pm. 

Also present at the press conference were Mukesh Agarwal, secretary, United Club, Keshari Kumar and others.